Tag Archives: God

Lest We Forget What God Has Done

Leave a comment
Entry of the Christ in Jerusalem – by Jean Leon Gerome, 1897.

As we have just celebrated Palm Sunday, and are looking forward to Easter next Sunday, I am reminded of the strong historical emphasis in the Bible. Why is that significant? Let’s work through that today.

Palm Sunday is the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while people honored Him like a king by putting their cloaks and palm branches in the road before Him [Mt 21:8]. Good Friday commemorates the day later that week that Jesus was crucified and buried [Jn 19:41-42]. Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, is the day He rose from the dead, accomplishing the mission He came here for [Mk 16:1-8]. Notice that these are all public, rather than private, events. For instance, when Moses beheld the burning bush in the desert, and heard God speaking to him from it, that was a private event; Moses was the only human there to tell what happened. However, God later confirmed that He was working through Moses via some very public events in Egypt in the form of the plagues He brought on the Egyptians. And while the Bible records a variety of private events like dreams and visions, it is interesting how often God points us back to public events that could be confirmed by multiple witnesses as testimony of His trustworthiness in the present and future. For instance, the apostle Paul refers to the Resurrection as having provided proof to all men that Jesus is the one chosen by God to judge the world [Ac 17:31]. And as Paul told King Agrippa at his trial, these things weren’t “done in a corner” [Ac 26:26]. Indeed, Paul writes to the Corinthian church listing the various witnesses of Christ, and mentions the fact that over 500 people saw Him at one time after His resurrection, many of whom were still alive at that time [1Co 15:3-8]; his readers could fact-check him if they wanted. The apostle John consistently refers to the fact that he and the other disciples had been present during Jesus’ life, and had witnessed His message and His miracles [Jn 19:34-35, 21:13-14, 1Jn 1:1-3]. Luke wasn’t a direct witness, but sought to compile a more orderly account of all the initial eyewitness reports of what happened [Lk 1:2-3], and noted that the witnesses had seen, heard, and touched Jesus after the Resurrection (i.e. Jesus was alive in the flesh and not simply a ghost or vision) [Lk 24:37-43]. And God Himself repeatedly pointed the Israelites back to the historical fact that He had miraculously rescued them out of Egypt [Ex 20:2, Lv 11:45, De 7:8, Am 2:10, etc]. In fact, He established a yearly ritual (the Feast of Unleavened Bread) to remind them of this Passover event [Ex 12:14, 25-27]. Later, when Joshua led them across the parted Jordan River, he had a monument erected with stones from the bottom of the river specifically to remind their descendants of what God had done for them in the past [Jos 4:6-7].

Why is the distinction between private and public events important? Private events depend on the truthfulness of the one recounting the event, while their account of a public event can be refuted by other witnesses if it doesn’t correspond with reality. For instance, Islam hinges on Mohammad actually being visited by an angel while he was alone in a cave. Mormonism depends on Joseph Smith actually being visited by an angel. Appealing to the actual occurrence of historical events is problematic for scammers (such as Smith’s supposed “Reformed Egyptian” that he tried claiming he had translated), but not for those telling the truth.

So, as we Christians have just celebrated one historic event and prepare to celebrate the turning point of all human history, I am grateful that God has established a public record to remind us of His actions throughout history. While there is revelation given to certain individuals directly in the Bible, God also often provided public signs and miracles to attest to the authenticity of their prophecies. We memorialize things with monuments so that we “never forget”, and God has likewise set up a string of historical events to serve as markers of His faithfulness – monuments to remind us lest we forget what God has done.

“Just Needs Some TLC”

Leave a comment
“Great starter home for the motivated DIYer! Just needs a little TLC.” – Author’s personal photo.

You’ve seen the ads. You know when a realtor says a house needs a little “Tender Loving Care”, or that it’s a “good fit for the motivated Do-It-Yourselfer”, that it’s pretty bad. My wife’s comment is sometimes “That’s not a fixer-upper, that’s a tearer-downer!” Sometimes home sellers are a bit overly-optimistic.

There is a similar optimism when it comes to the condition of the human soul. People like to think that they are “pretty good”, all things considered. They may have made some mistakes over the years, but overall, the good outweighs the bad. If they even need religion at all, it’s just to give them some structure, some goals, maybe some accountability to finally break some bad habits. Just some minor repairs – you know, a little paint, maybe some new roof shingles, update the light fixtures, nothing serious – and we’ll be ready for whatever lies beyond the grave. But until we understand the extent of our need, we’ll never appreciate the value of the gift extended to us. That’s why learning of God’s amazing love is only half the story. If we think we’re pretty good already, or that God grades on a curve – we’ll be OK as long we’re better than so-and-so – then we might mistakenly think “Why wouldn’t God love me? I’m a pretty nice guy!”

Understand this, we are not a house in need of a little DIY – a little TLC, a little fixing-up. We are dead in our sins, completely helpless [Eph 2:1]. Like a house situated over a growing sinkhole, being devoured by termites, with a  Category 5 hurricane approaching, we are doomed. No amount of cosmetic enhancement is going to save that house, and in fact, the house’s appearance may only mask the real dangers. Being “more good than bad” won’t help. It’s like going to paint a room white and finding that some black paint has been spilt in the bucket of white paint. It’s many times more white than black, but it doesn’t matter; it’s tainted and isn’t getting used if you want pure white walls. And absolute, pure perfection is the only measure acceptable before God, our perfect judge who does not grade on a curve. Every human on Earth is in that condition and will die like that unless God draws them to Himself and awakens them to new life [Jn 6:44, Eph 2:4-5]. But it gets worse. Just like a judge would be unjust to let criminals go unpunished, there is a punishment awaiting every person who fails that standard of perfection. That punishment is eternal separation from God, from whom all good things derive [Jam 1:17]. People have sometimes been offended by the idea of God condemning people to “eternal conscious torment” in Hell, but what else could separation from God be? Christians do not carry on about the dangers of Hell to scare people into becoming Christians, but rather as loving friends concerned for the tragic end we see our unbelieving friends heading for. Could we call ourselves real friends if we didn’t try to warn others of impending disaster?

The prognosis seems very grim indeed. And yet, while God is perfectly just to not let any imperfect human into His presence, and to allow each and every person to suffer the torment that separation from Him would necessarily be, He does not desire that any should perish [Ezk 33:11]. But our best efforts are helpless to prevent the inevitable end that must result given an imperfect person standing before a perfect judge. That is the very, very bad news. But God, in a one-sided display of love and mercy, brought us very, very good news, in the form of a substitute who would take our place and bear the wrath of punishment rightly due each of us. But how? Wouldn’t any substitute be tainted like we are, doomed to score sub-perfect? Such is God’s love for us, that He sent His Son, the 2nd person of the Trinity, to be miraculously conceived and born in human flesh, truly God and truly man, to live a perfect life and offer Himself as the only possible acceptable sacrifice that could satisfy the perfect justice of God the Father, conquering death and proving the Father’s acceptance of His sacrifice by rising from the dead, allowing those who accept Him, who were once enemies of God,  to be reconciled to God, adopted, transformed, and given a sure hope of eternal life.

It seems to be good to be true (when we understand the natural state of our decrepitude and hopelessness) that God would step in to effect such a miraculous rescue. Sadly, not all will accept rescue. But that’s our only chance, for we aren’t just a simple “fixer-upper”.

New Page

Leave a comment

New pages don’t show up in the feed of posts, so if you’re looking for this week’s post, it is a new page in the site menu called “Your Free Gift” (above and to the right, below the banner at the top of the page). Check it out and let me know what you think! Thanks 🙂

Steel Day 2018

Leave a comment

Leslie Robertson

I’m always thinking about potential topics for future posts, but sometimes I don’t have to go looking for topics – the topics find me. Such was the case when I was watching the preview release of the AISC documentary “Leaning Out”. This was one of those rare situations where I could get continuing education credit for my engineering licensure while watching something that would be of general interest to non-engineers as well. Produced by the American Institute of Steel Construction to commemorate their 10th annual “Steel Day”, this excellent documentary combined a review of the history of the design and construction of the World Trade Center in NYC with a biography of its lead structural engineer, Leslie E. Robertson. Perhaps you’re wondering what this has to do with defending Christianity. Well… let’s work through that today.

In the documentary, Robertson shares that he enlisted in the Navy at age 16 to serve in WWII, where he saw 3 buddies killed. After the war, he became a pacifist, and campaigned against war and the proliferation of nuclear arms. But then he mentions that, after seeing his buddies killed, he could never believe in a benevolent God. That was a bit unexpected in an engineering documentary, but traumatic experiences can leave lasting impacts on us, as that experience did for him. Seeing your friends die is awful, whether in war (where it has to be at least somewhat expected given the fact that each side is actively trying to kill the other), or in the many ways lives are lost every day in the civilian world. What grieves me, though, is the lasting blinding effect on this otherwise brilliant designer, and knowing there are dire, eternal consequences for him that need not be. Spending the next 70+ years since WWII rejecting God, and facing an eternity separated from his Creator should have never resulted from the loss of his friends, thus making a tragic event much worse. But what of his reasoning, that a benevolent God would not let his friends die?

I don’t know if he’s really thought through what God “not letting his friends die” would entail. Should God alter the thoughts of enemy soldiers so they never target them? Should He miraculously alter the trajectory of incoming shells, or make bullets bounce off his friends? Not to be irreverent about the death of his friends, but saying a good God wouldn’t let your friends die, and acknowledging what that would entail, are two different things. I’m sure, like most engineers, Robertson has had a critic or two say he should’ve done things differently on a project. In fact, he did take some unwarranted criticisms after September 11th from people looking for anyone to blame for the deaths of their loved ones in the collapse of the towers. Yet he would be completely justified in saying that those people didn’t understand the extreme detail and care he poured into that design.  Could they have done any better if they were in the same situation? I think not. Yet, sadly, that is exactly what he is doing to God when he says God shouldn’t have let things happen the way they did. I have a lot of respect for him as a brilliant engineer, but he’s keeping a double standard when he defends his own designs, but doesn’t allow that God might have His own reasons as well.

Robertson’s very ability to reject God like he has is proof that the presence of evil or suffering is not an adequate reason to reject God. Free will, the ability to choose between alternative options, is a gift from God. He could’ve easily made us like robots, repeating “I love you, Lord” when programmed to do so, and singing His praises when He hit our “Play” button. But forced love isn’t really love, is it? Instead, God gave us the option to truly love Him, which also means the potential to truly reject Him. And, sadly, free will brings other consequences as well. We can freely love our fellow humans, or freely do them harm, even killing them, just as Robertson’s friends were killed. Nevertheless, the fact that He’s given us this capacity to choose between good and evil, and the all-too-observable fact that we often choose evil, does nothing to negate either God’s power, goodness, or ultimate existence. Tragedies like what Leslie Robertson witnessed don’t cause me to doubt the goodness of God, but rather the goodness of man.

Robertson’s rejection of God mirrors the old reasoning of Epicurus, which assumed God’s benevolence is in opposition to His power. For instance, “If He’s omni-benevolent, He isn’t omnipotent, because He didn’t prevent situation X from happening; or if He’s omnipotent, He isn’t omni-benevolent, because He still didn’t prevent situation X from happening.” God not acting the way we want Him to act is seen as either a sign of powerlessness to change the situation, or apathy regarding it. But this is to ignore the fact that God is a free agent. He’s not a force of nature, like gravity, which must act a certain way under certain circumstances. Just because God has the power to do something doesn’t mean He has to, or even that He should. It is entirely possible that God has other priorities than we do, and, given our very finite minds and His omniscience, it’s rather likely that His priorities are sorted out better than ours. If this has been a sticking point for you like it has for Mr. Robertson, I urge you – plead with you – to not let this issue keep you from being reconciled with your loving Creator.

“Who Made God?”, Part 2

1 Comment

Richard DawkinsLast week, we looked at how famed British atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell objected to God by asking the question “Who made God?” Then we saw why this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God, and actually does nothing to invalidate the concept of God. But Russell wasn’t the only one to get stuck on that question. So, this week, I’d like to review Richard Dawkins’ similar objection. Let’s work through that today by jumping straight into the relevant quotes from Richard’s book “The God Delusion”.

“The whole argument turns on the familiar question ‘Who made God?’, which most thinking people discover for themselves. A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us escape.”[1]

“Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe [a plant Dawkins was using as an example] (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance…. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?” [2]

“In any case, even though genuinely irreducible complexity would wreck Darwin’s theory if it were ever found, who is to say that it wouldn’t wreck the intelligent design theory as well? Indeed, it already has wrecked the intelligent design theory, for, as I keep saying and will say again, however little we know about God, the one thing we can be sure of is that he would have to be very very complex and presumably irreducibly so!” [3]

Dawkins’ fundamental objection here is that he believes God would have to be “complex”, and that this would require a prior cause that leads to an infinite regress, like your kids asking “Why?” after every answer you give.  Now, I see two issues here.

First, he seems to be thinking of God as some kind of cosmic machine. For instance, even a simple plastic gadget might require a very complex, carefully controlled machine to manufacture it. That machine, itself composed of gears and pistons and electronics and whatnot, had to be produced by something prior. The machine’s complexity – i.e. it’s composition of multiple interrelated parts – requires explanation by a prior cause, like another machine that produced the gears, a designer, and so forth.  But the gadget and the machine that produced it are both contingent and not self-existent. Self-existence is what ends the infinite regress that Dawkins stumbles over. Of course, a materialist might opt for a self-existent universe, but even if that were possible, it can’t ever cause anything to change. You might as well wait for your pet rock to do some tricks. That need for a free agent to initiate anything drives us toward God, but that is the one place Dawkins can never let himself be taken.

A second issue is that he confuses the complexity of the brain with the simplicity (or unity) of mind. Hardly surprising for an materialist evolutionary biologist to only see the neurons of the brain at work during design, but this is an important distinction. While mind and brain are typically paired, it is mind that is essential to design. A dead brain perfectly preserved in a jar in the lab will never design anything, even though it is still quite complex. Why is that? Because design necessarily requires 2 things: purpose and choice. These two essential characteristics of design entail 1) a mind to plan out a purpose, and 2) agency to make a choice between competing alternatives so as to achieve that purpose. Therefore, rationality and consciousness are the key attributes of a mind that make design possible. God is immaterial mind, while the brain is a contingent, physical object; it is hardware that can form, develop during our lives, atrophy, and eventually cease to function. While the brain is a complex system of interconnected neurons, all of the aforementioned stages confirm that brains are also contingent; they begin to exist and cease existing at some point. Mind, however, is not complex, but simple. Now, what does it mean to speak of the simplicity of mind (not to be confused with being simple-minded)? Namely this: that mind cannot be subdivided. A mind is simple as opposed to complex; it is a unitary whole not composed of parts. In fact, if Dawkins were to open any of several systematic theology texts [4] and read the opposing side, he would find that “simplicity”, or “unity of being”, or “noncomposition”, or “indivisibility”, has been an attribute of God recognized by Christians for nearly 2000 years. If he were to argue his case for a “complex designer” because he objected to the traditional formulation of divine simplicity, I could be more sympathetic to his objection. But I’ve yet to see any indication that he has even engaged with that issue. So for him to object to God because of his complexity is to object to a god of his own making, and not to the God of Christianity.

 

[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008), p.136.
[2] ibid, pp. 146-7.
[3] ibid. p. 151.
[4] For example:
Geisler (2011), Systematic Theology in One Volume, Chapter 30 – “God’s Pure Actuality and Simplicity”;
Grudem (2000), Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Chapter 11 – “Incommunicable Attributes of God”;
Berkhof (1938), Systematic Theology, Part 1, Ch. VI., Section D – “The Unity of God”.
Boyce (1887), Abstract of Systematic Theology, Section 2 – “The Simplicity of God”;
Hodge (1872), Systematic Theology, Vol 2;  Ch. 5, Section 4 – “Spirituality of God”;
Thomas Aquinas, 1274, Summa Theologica, Vol. 1, Question 3 – “Of the Simplicity of God (in 8 Articles)”;

“Who Made God?”, Part 1

Leave a comment

Bertrand Russell in 1924

Have you ever heard the objection, “Oh yeah? But who made God?” The answer, of course, is that nobody made God, but this has still been a stumbling block to a lot of people, so let’s work through that today.

Let’s start by looking at this question as famed atheist Bertrand Russell posed it in 1927 in his “Why I Am Not a Christian” speech. Next week, we’ll take a look at Richard Dawkins’ recycling of the question in 2006. First, let’s hear from Russell, considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, in his own words:

“I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography,  and I there found this sentence: ‘My father taught me that the  question, “Who made me?” cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, “Who made God?” ’ That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.”[1]

To speak of God (at least, in the Christian understanding of the title) as needing a cause, is to speak irrationally. That is like asking “Who moved this unmovable object?” Or ” When did this beginningless entity begin to exist?” If the terms are correctly understood, they are understood to be contradictory and the question invalid. For part of being “God” is being eternal and possessing necessary existence (i.e. He always existed, and He has to exist for anything else to exist). If you’re thinking of any entity that could be “made”, you’re simply not thinking of God.

Consider the following scenario. A clever young man gets an idea for a truly useful gadget that everyone will want. He starts making them in his garage, but quickly outgrows that, and soon he is forming a company and building a factory. More hiring, more expanding, and soon the company has grown and has to have several layers of management at multiple factories. Now several years after that humble beginning in a garage, Billy, a new worker at the newest factory is going through employee training. He learns who will be his Line Foreman, and Shift Supervisor, and Department Manager, on up the chain of command until finally, it stops at President and Owner. Now, young Billy raises his hand, and asks, “Who’s his boss?” Nobody… he’s the owner,” comes the answer. But Billy persists, “Yeah, but who appointed him owner?” The trainer responds, “Nobody appointed him owner; he’s the original owner… he founded the company. It wouldn’t even exist without him.”

Now, was the company trainer trying to trick Billy when he said nobody needed to appoint John as president because he founded the company? No, of course not. Founding a company necessarily means you exist before the company you found. But what if the “company” is, instead, all of reality? And the founder is God? His pre-existence means there can be no other entity around to appoint Him or “make” Him, and this stops the infinite regress of the causal chain that concerned Russell.

The fact that people ask “Who made God?” is actually a testament to the self-evident nature of the law of causality; we instinctively recognize the relation of cause and effect and look for it everywhere. But this also demonstrates the common misunderstanding of it that Russell also fell prey to: people tend to think that this principle states that every effect has a cause. If that really were the case, then “Who made God?” might be a legitimate question. But here’s the problem: it’s a sloppy sentence – a shortcut that doesn’t always work. While we can be intellectually sloppy like that in our day-to-day observations, applying any statement universally requires more intellectual rigor. To correct the statement, we need to say, “everything that begins to exist has a cause.” Something without beginning would not require a cause, nor could it have a cause. Russell does acknowledge this as a possibility in the last sentence quoted above, but then assumes that the eternality of the physical world (or universe) is just as adequate an explanation as God, which is his second mistake.

Most people can be excused for thinking “everything must have a cause” because everything we observe did begin to exist at some point, so the shorter wording appears to apply universally; but a philosopher of his stature should not be caught by such careless wording. Granted, he fell for this when he was young, learning it from an author he respected, but to continue to believe that confirms something observed elsewhere about the skeptic: though portrayed as intellectual rejection of God, their reasons are very often emotional or volitional instead [2]. The tragedy here is that John Stuart Mill would come to such a bad conclusion, not seek out a better explanation, promulgate his error, and that it would be picked up by someone like Russell and passed on to succeeding generations. Folks, I don’t mind if you question Christianity, and you’re certainly not going to come up with a question that’s going to stump God; so by all means, test everything and hold on to what’s good, as Paul would say [1Thes 5:21]. But don’t forget to question your skepticism too.

[1] Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not A Christian”, speech delivered 3/6/1927 at Battersea Town Hall, England.
[2] J. Warner Wallace, Cold Case Christianity, (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2013), p. 132.  Also online here.

Are You Certain About That?

Leave a comment

The Discovery, by Norman Rockwell, 1956

Certainty about something brings a sense of security, but is certainty possible in matters of belief? Skeptics often recoil at the confidence Christians have in knowing that God exists, that the Bible is His message to us, and that His way is the only acceptable way to live. The nerve of those Christians! How arrogant to express such certainty about such things! Can we be “absolutely certain” of things like the existence of God, life after death, and so forth? Or are they like childhood beliefs in Santa Claus that will be seen through inevitably? Let’s work through that today.

To an extent I will grant the skeptic their case against absolute certainty, although probably not for the reason they might hope. True “absolute” certainty is only possible with exhaustive, comprehensive knowledge.[1] However, that is called omniscience, and only God possesses it. Therefore, technically, I would say absolute certainty exists but is impossible for us mere mortals, finite as we are. However, it’s “all in who you know”, as they say, and I would offer that the Christian doesn’t need to possess that ultimate level of certainty because he knows the One who does. God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, said, “I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure'” [Is 46:9-10]. I know the Writer of this grand play, so whether or not I know how the next scene will unfold, I can be certain of how it ends (spoiler alert: God wins), and I can rest easy in that knowledge. As Dr. Douglas Groothuis said, “we can live wisely within ignorance if it is bracketed by knowledge.”[2]

Now, I said I would grant the skeptics their rejection of absolute human certainty, but does this mean that I don’t think Christians can be “certain” about the One whom they have staked their life on? Hardly. Absolute certainty comes with complete knowledge, which is God’s alone, but knowledge is something we may possess to varying degrees, just as we may be loving or merciful or holy to a degree, while God possesses all these attributes perfectly. Just because we aren’t perfectly loving like God, doesn’t mean we can’t understand and demonstrate love to a great degree. Likewise, we may have a more than sufficient confidence about various things in life, even if we can never attain absolute certainty. How certain can we be of things? I would suggest that our certainty is proportional to the authority from which we receive our information. For instance, if you were looking for information on finite element analysis for structural design (an interest of mine), and your choices were between me and Edward Wilson, you would hopefully go with Wilson, one of the key figures in the development of that analysis method. You could have far greater certainty in the veracity of his statements than mine given that he really did “write the book” on that now-common method of analysis. You could have more confidence in my statements on the subject the more I referenced legitimate authorities on the subject like him, or demonstrated that my statements matched up with cold, hard reality via testing or logical necessity. The closer we get to legitimate authority on a subject, the closer we get to certainty about it. The closest I can get to absolute certainty in life is when I rely on the all-knowing Author of life itself.

Of course, if it were just a matter of knowledge of data, I could misinterpret the data, just as 2 scientists can look at the same data and interpret it quite differently depending on the assumptions they bring to the table. However, it’s not data we have come to know, but rather a personal, relational Creator who knew us better than we know ourselves before we were even born. And He has set His Holy Spirit in us [Gal 4:6] as a testimony [Rom 8:16], a seal [2Co 1:22], and a pledge [2Co 5:5, Eph 1:14]. This is why the apostle Paul could speak so forcefully when he stated, “I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.” [2Ti 1:12] This is why John summed up his purpose in writing his first letter thusly: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” [1Jn 5:13] This assurance for the Christian comes not from turning a blind eye to evidence the skeptic thinks contradicts our beliefs, but rather from “Christ in you, the hope of glory” [Col 1:27], and that is a hope that does not disappoint [Rom 5:5] .

Am I absolutely certain that God exists and the Bible is His true revelation of Himself to us, and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Due to my finitude, I would say I can’t be absolutely certain of that. But I would also say that I’m far more certain of those things than I am of my sitting here in front of a computer typing these words. I could be in a coma right now dreaming about blogs and office deadlines and commuting and all the other thousand little things in what I consider my daily life, living out my own little version of The Matrix. But even in that extreme case, when all of the external world around me is questionable, I still have the evidence of His Spirit in me, and I still know that God necessarily exists, that His Word endures forever, and that “my Redeemer lives”! And I’ll take that degree of certainty, absolute or not,  over anything else this world has to offer. Blessings, y’all.

[1] h/t to Bruce Waltke, in his lecture series on the Book of Proverbs, featured on www.biblicaltraining.org for this insight. See his lecture, “Hermeneutica Sacra“.
[2] Douglas Groothuis, Walking Through Twilight: A Wife’s Illness – A Philosopher’s Lament (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2017), p. 49.

Objections to Worship

Leave a comment

Last week’s post was about worship of God “in spirit and truth” as Jesus phrased it. But there is an objection from skeptics to God desiring worship. They say the desire for worship on the part of God, and particularly the command for us to worship Him, is petulant, arrogant, needy, egotistical, and so on. Do they have a case? Let’s work through that today.

The main problem I see with this line of reasoning is that they seem to be objecting to a perceived lack of warrant, or justification, for worship. But this is because the god they object to is too little of a god, so to speak. Like the strawman fallacy, where one creates a caricature of your opponent’s view to pick apart and easily defeat, the skeptic has made a “straw god” to be disgusted with. It would, indeed, be the height of arrogance for a mere man to demand worship as God; no matter how amazing or powerful or smart he was, he would still be, without a doubt, unqualified for that role. But that’s not the God I serve.

  • The God of the Bible is distinctly and uniquely qualified to be worshiped. God is everything we consider to be praiseworthy. For example, we might praise the gracious and persistent love of a parent for their child even when the child rebels and hates the parent; yet God demonstrated His love for us in that He loved us before we could love Him [Rom 5:8,10, 1Jn 4:19]. We might praise the self-sacrifice of the soldier that gives his life to save his comrades; yet Christ gave His life as a sacrifice for all [Rom 5:6-8, 1Jn 4:10]. We might praise the judge who stands up against a corrupt system and refuses to be bought off with bribes, but rather punishes the guilty and releases the innocent that was unjustly charged; yet God is perfectly just [Deut 10:17, Ro 2:11]. He is all of these things and more, to the nth degree. Does this mean that God is subservient to independent behavioral standards then? On the contrary, we have these ideas of exemplary moral conduct because they are grounded in the unchanging nature of God.
  • All others are not qualified to receive worship. Some skeptics charge that demanding worship is indicative of the most unpraiseworthy of humans: megalomaniacs, malevolent dictators, psychopaths and so on. So why would we consider that behavior good when God demonstrates it? I would simply note that we are repulsed by humans craving worship because we recognize they are all unworthy of being worshiped, whether they desire it or not. They are not actually omnipotent, omniscient, or even the greatest thing since sliced bread. In attempting to lay claim to something they have no right to, they seek to steal glory from God.
  • God has the right to worship. If some stranger walked up to you and demanded that you salute them when they approached, you might reasonably take offense at that assumption of superiority on their part. But suppose you are a soldier in your nation’s military, in uniform, on duty at your base, and the stranger approaching you was the base commander. Even if you don’t know him personally or even recognize him, the symbols of far higher rank on his uniform mean that he has the right to your respect and your obedience. And if you do recognize him and just don’t like him, that doesn’t really matter. You are still obligated to salute because of his position of authority over you. Of course, you don’t have to salute; but you should probably expect to pay the consequences if you don’t. The skeptic objecting to God’s command to worship Him is treating God like the random stranger walking up and making the same demands – “How rude! Who do you think you are?” But God isn’t a random peer – He is our Creator, and He is sovereign over us, like it or not. You can object to His authority. You can refuse to respect, honor, glorify, and love Him – even though these would be the only reasonable responses if you understood who He was and what He’s done – but there are consequences to that choice.
  • Lastly, praising God and worshiping Him is simply acknowledging what is true. Truth is correspondence with reality, and if God really is loving, merciful, just, holy, sovereign – and if we desire to be truthful – then it is only right that we acknowledge those statements about God.

Gary Parrett described worship as our faithful response to God’s gracious revelation. His revealing of Himself to us warrants the response we call worship, whether that take the form of trembling, reverential awe, or exuberant, joyful praise, or deeply quiet gratitude, or simple, obedient service. If you’re a skeptic, don’t miss out on being reconciled with your Creator, the one and only King of all, because you objected to a little god that was only a pretender to the throne.

Worship in Truth

1 Comment

“Jesus and the Samaritan Woman”, by Gustav Dore, 19th c.

A woman inquired of Jesus about the proper place to worship: was it the temple in Jerusalem, or Mount Gerazim where her people worshiped? This raises the larger question of what’s actually important in this activity of worshiping God. Does location matter? Time? What about form of worship? In His reply to her one issue, Jesus answered the bigger issue when He told her to worship “in spirit and in truth”, for those are the worshipers God seeks [Jn 4:23-24].  But what does that mean? Let’s work through that today.

First, Nelson’s Bible Dictionary defines worship as “the supreme honor or veneration given either in thought or deed to a person or thing.”[1] However, while it can be directed to anything or anyone, only God is actually worthy of worship. Let’s look at 5 distinctives of Christian worship.

  • We must worship “in spirit” because God is spirit; that is, He is immaterial. And He has created us humans with a spirit as well. We are far more than the sum of our physical body components. Our worship can not be reduced to simply chemical reactions or physical responses to stimuli. There is a relational interaction between our spirit and the Spirit of God that transcends location or language or communication skills. Reverend Watkins writes in Ellicott’s Commentary that “The yearning of the human spirit is that of a child seeking the author of his being.”[2]  As Grudem points out, “genuine worship is not something that is self-generated or that can be worked up within ourselves. It must rather be the outpouring of our hearts in response to a realization of who God is.”[3]
  • While there is a mystical, spiritual component to our worship that may be expressed in a variety of ways, Christian worship is worship “in truth”. Therefore, it is also strongly propositional. It makes informative statements. It is not just some wishy-washy, make-it-up-as-you-go “spirituality” popular among many these days, but rather objective statements about God’s attributes, His actions in the world, and His work in the lives of His people. When we sing “Up from the grave He arose!”, we are making definite objective statements about Jesus’ actions in history. When we sing “Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!”, we are making objective statements about His nature. There’s no room for “true for you but not for me” relativism in Christian worship.
  • Worship “in truth” has real content. If your worship consists of making animal noises, I would argue that you’re not really worshiping.  Or if your worship is only an emotional high, barely distinguishable from the feelings at Saturday night’s concert other than it’s on Sunday morning, I would encourage you to look a little deeper. Emotions are good, but Christian worship grounds those emotions in solid truth. There’s a saying that “We sing our theology”, and that should give us pause. In light of that, the Christian should always examine the words they sing to verify that they are truthful and correspond to what we know of God.
  • Worship “in truth” will correspond to who God is, for truth is correspondence to reality. Ellicott’s commentary on those verses in John says, “Worship which is ‘in truth’ is in harmony with the nature of the God whom we worship.”[2] Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament likewise says of this passage, “To worship in truth is not merely to worship in sincerity, but with a worship corresponding to the nature of its object.”[4] The Expositor’s Greek Testament adds that worship “is to be ἐν ἀληθείᾳ {en aletheia} – in correspondence with reality.”[5] In other words, we worship God as all-knowing, all-powerful, sovereign, and holy because He actually possesses those attributes. We don’t worship God as the sum total of the universe (pantheism) or as the Force from Star Wars (panentheism), because those propositions – those truth claims – do not correspond to reality.
  • Lastly, worship “in truth” should be free from hypocrisy. After all, hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another, which is the total opposite of corresponding to reality.

In summary, Christian worship is honoring God with our heart, soul, strength and mind, recognizing who He is, and responding appropriately. It is not limited by time or place, or status of the worshiper, or style of worship. It must be offered honestly and sincerely, not by rote, as a spiritual service to God and not to please man. For that is what God desires of us, and only that will ultimately satisfy creatures created to glorify God.

[1] “Worship”, Nelson’s Foundational Bible Dictionary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004).
[2] John 4:23, Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers, ed. Charles John Ellicott (London: Cassell & Co., 1905). Section on the Gospel of John authored by the Reverend H.W. Watkins.
[3] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), p. 1011.
[4] Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (NY: Scribner, 1887).
[5] John 4:23, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, ed. Rev. W. Robertson Nicoll (NY: George H. Doran Co, 1897). Section on the Gospel of John authored by Marcus Dods.

A Dangerous Perception

Leave a comment

The 9.1 magnitude Japan earthquake of 2011, as recorded at the Hokkaido Station seismograph.

A colleague and I were talking the other day about the difficulties in conveying the dangers of rare events to people. The site conditions for projects we were each working on had triggered some seismic provisions that can be very costly to design for, and to build. Unfortunately, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other relatively rare events are easy to blow off… until they happen to you.  Who wants to spend money or time preparing for something that is (in their mind) unlikely to happen in their lifetime?  Especially when it’s going to cost a lot? It doesn’t help that our part of the world has the potential for a high magnitude earthquake (M7.0+), but hasn’t had one in just over 200 hundred years. While it’s good that major earthquakes are rare here, one bad side effect is apathy and an unspoken rule of “out of sight, out of mind”. This tendency to not appreciate danger that is perceived as distant or unlikely to occur isn’t just an obstacle for engineers trying to justify their fees to clients. People often have the same mindset when it comes to spiritual matters, and that’s what I’d like to work through today.

We’ll wear helmets on our bikes and seat belts in our cars because of the dangers of vehicle accidents; we’ll put non-slip treads on stairs because of the potential for falls; we’ll put nets and cushions around trampolines because of accidents there; we’ll even stop eating things we like and start eating things we hate to stave off various diseases – we’ll take all sorts of precautions to protect our frail physical lives that are often here today and gone tomorrow despite our best efforts, but we won’t look to the safety of our eternal souls. Isn’t that an odd ordering of priorities? Small dangers can loom large in our view while much greater dangers are perceived as unimportant. And yet, none of us are guaranteed our next breath, much less the next day/month/year/decade. Death, that heavy curtain we just can’t see past, can close on us at any time. But that is actually just the short-term danger. For the Bible tells us some of what is beyond that black curtain: judgement, but not on our terms.

I’ve heard some people say that that if they died and found themselves in the presence of the God they had denied all these years, they would surely demand that He justify His actions throughout human history to them – as if they weren’t less than a speck of dust before His might that created the universe out of nothing, as if they weren’t a moral cesspool in comparison to His perfect goodness, as if they weren’t the intellectual equivalent of a bacterium in comparison to His omnipotence and wisdom [Ro 9:20, Ps 103:14, Isa 45:9, Dan 4:35]. I pray they realize the arrogance and folly of their statements before that hypothetical scenario becomes reality for them, because that trial scene will be very one-sided, and it won’t be them asking the questions. Indeed, we will all appear before God one day [Heb 9:27], on God’s terms. What does that mean?  It means that perfection is the standard to meet [Rom 3:23, Dt 32:4]. It means that we will answer for every word and deed and thought [Mt 12:36, Heb 4:12-13]. It means that if we can’t meet that standard, then we need a proxy – a substitute – who can, and is willing to, take our place and represent us before the judgement seat of God. That one is Jesus Christ [Jn 1:29, 2Co 5:21, 1Tim 2:5-6].

Don’t make the mistake of protecting yourself from the little things that can only affect this life, and neglect the real possibility of entering eternity without having reconciled with your Creator (and Judge) on His terms. Just as many of the earthquakes of the past came when people least expected, you could find yourself standing before God in the blink of an eye. Make the investment now that will make that meeting an occasion of joy rather than terror.