I have heard secularists say that we believers ought not bring those convictions that come from our faith into the political sphere. That those convictions ought to remain in the religious sphere (i.e. we can have our opinions at church, but should not be allowed to vote on those issues or act on them when they are matters of the state).
My response was that they are asking us to compartmentalize our beliefs. They are asking us to only act as believers on Sunday.
But any believer who has ever discussed his faith with a non-believer has heard the charge that the church is full of hypocrites.
So it seems inconsistent to me when they say that we ought to only live out our faith on Sundays, but then charge us with hypocrisy when we don't live as believers the rest of the week.
Perhaps it would help clear up the issue for them if I ask them to only act married when they are at home and not act married when they are out in public. Of course that would be absurd. Any committed and reasonable spouse would expect their spouse to behave as a married man or woman at all times. Not only that, but we as a civil society expect those who are married to behave in a manner consistent with their marriage vows at all times. Society looks down on those who don't do this, which is why adultery, infidelity, and spousal abuse are not applauded as tolerable behavior.
But I would say that society also looks down on those believers that don't act like true believers during the week. This is why they are charged with hypocrisy.
The admonition to leave our religious convictions out of the public square does not make much sense coming from the very people that would say that if we follow that admonition we would be guilty of hypocrisy.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Problem of Evil
A master painter understands the relationship between illumination and contrast and uses them both to glorify his subject.
God's subject? Himself.
God's subject? Himself.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Pen-Pals
When you were a kid did you know anyone who had a pen-pal? Or did you have a pen-pal? That was cool, wasn't it?
But what if your friend spent all of their time writing to and reading notes from that pen-pal? What if they that's all they did? They didn't play with friends. They didn't come outside. What if they stayed in their house all the time writing note after note after note to their pen-pal? That would be a little weird, wouldn't it?
What if they did come outside and when you ran up to say hi, they took out a little notepad and started writing notes to their pen-pal while you were talking? That would be rude, wouldn't it? Or maybe just as you started talking, they took out an envelope from their pen-pal and started reading the letter inside.
Would you still think it was cool to have a pen-pal? I doubt it.
As a kid, you'd probably take off and find someone who really wanted to be your friend.
Why is it that as a child we would have recognized this behavior for what it was, but as adults we do the same thing digitally and call it 'social networking?'
Perhaps children have a basic understanding of what a "friend" is that we as adults have lost sight of.
But what if your friend spent all of their time writing to and reading notes from that pen-pal? What if they that's all they did? They didn't play with friends. They didn't come outside. What if they stayed in their house all the time writing note after note after note to their pen-pal? That would be a little weird, wouldn't it?
What if they did come outside and when you ran up to say hi, they took out a little notepad and started writing notes to their pen-pal while you were talking? That would be rude, wouldn't it? Or maybe just as you started talking, they took out an envelope from their pen-pal and started reading the letter inside.
Would you still think it was cool to have a pen-pal? I doubt it.
As a kid, you'd probably take off and find someone who really wanted to be your friend.
Why is it that as a child we would have recognized this behavior for what it was, but as adults we do the same thing digitally and call it 'social networking?'
Perhaps children have a basic understanding of what a "friend" is that we as adults have lost sight of.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Consultant / Client Relationship
As consultants we want our clients to succeed. By making our clients successful, we are successful. So it is a bit mind-boggling when as a consultant you offer what is best (which, more often than not, is more difficult for the consultant) and the client insists you give them something substandard.
Charles Schulz must have had insight into this part of the consultant / client relationship.
The Oatmeal has also written about this here.
Charles Schulz must have had insight into this part of the consultant / client relationship.
The Oatmeal has also written about this here.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Professors, Instructors, and Teachers
A professor tells you what he thinks. His subject is the world of ideas.
An instructor tells you what to do. His subject is facts.
A teacher shows you how to think about what you do. His subject is wisdom.
There are many professors and instructors, but precious few teachers.
Respect your professors.
Honor your instructors.
Emulate your teachers.
An instructor tells you what to do. His subject is facts.
A teacher shows you how to think about what you do. His subject is wisdom.
There are many professors and instructors, but precious few teachers.
Respect your professors.
Honor your instructors.
Emulate your teachers.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
No ear has heard
On Sunday our worship pastor made the comment during a song, "Sing with the angels" at which point all the musicians stopped playing and the entire church was singing acapella.
How do we know that the music in heaven lacks accompaniment, or that angels don't play musical instruments? Couldn't it be that not only are they great musicians, but that they are skilled at playing instrument we could never even imagine, making sounds and tones, creating harmonies that our ears don't even have the ability to hear?
The Bible says that when we go to be with the Lord, we experience a change and we receive glorified bodies. Is it the case that the only advantage that comes with these bodies is that they don't age or don't get sick? Isn't God much more imaginative and creative than that?
I would expect that the glorified bodies we receive can hear things that our earthly ears cannot hear. See colors our earthly eyes cannot see. Taste flavors our tongues cannot taste. Our minds will understand things that are hidden. Our hands will be able to work with a skill that is not available to us now.
Let your imagination go. Try to think of what a new color would look like? What would an entire rainbow of new colors look like? What would music sound like if it was completely new, with sounds you've never heard before? What kinds of fragrances would be so envigorating, so penetrating that the fragrances we have now would seem dull by comparison?
Humans are incredibly imaginative and creative. For years we have pushed the envelope of sight and sound, taste and smell. But we have always had a single pallet to work from. A limited set of colors, a smaller set of flavors and aromas, and an even smaller set of musical tones. And for thousands of years we've been able to take those limited sets and do so much with them.
Now try to imagine if those sets were not limited.
The Bible says that our eyes have never seen, our ears have never heard, and our minds cannot imagine or even comprehend the things that God has in store for those who love Him.
How do we know that the music in heaven lacks accompaniment, or that angels don't play musical instruments? Couldn't it be that not only are they great musicians, but that they are skilled at playing instrument we could never even imagine, making sounds and tones, creating harmonies that our ears don't even have the ability to hear?
The Bible says that when we go to be with the Lord, we experience a change and we receive glorified bodies. Is it the case that the only advantage that comes with these bodies is that they don't age or don't get sick? Isn't God much more imaginative and creative than that?
I would expect that the glorified bodies we receive can hear things that our earthly ears cannot hear. See colors our earthly eyes cannot see. Taste flavors our tongues cannot taste. Our minds will understand things that are hidden. Our hands will be able to work with a skill that is not available to us now.
Let your imagination go. Try to think of what a new color would look like? What would an entire rainbow of new colors look like? What would music sound like if it was completely new, with sounds you've never heard before? What kinds of fragrances would be so envigorating, so penetrating that the fragrances we have now would seem dull by comparison?
Humans are incredibly imaginative and creative. For years we have pushed the envelope of sight and sound, taste and smell. But we have always had a single pallet to work from. A limited set of colors, a smaller set of flavors and aromas, and an even smaller set of musical tones. And for thousands of years we've been able to take those limited sets and do so much with them.
Now try to imagine if those sets were not limited.
The Bible says that our eyes have never seen, our ears have never heard, and our minds cannot imagine or even comprehend the things that God has in store for those who love Him.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
To Believe
When we talk about believing something, we often think of it as a passive kind of a thing, as if it's something we have or don't have. In fact, atheists will try to argue this very point in explaining their position. They will say that it's not so much that they don't believe, they simply don't 'have a belief' about God. We tend to think that belief is something that automatically happens when sufficient evidence for a thing is provided. This is the case in some circumstances. If I see a man steal something from a store, I automatically believe he is a thief. The evidence that I see with my own eyes makes the proposition difficult to deny. The opposite is also true sometimes. Given the lack of sufficient evidence, we simply have no belief in something. I have no belief about the existence of aliens because I haven't seen evidence for their existence, and there is no such thing as evidence against their existence. It's an area I have suspended judgement on. I have no belief either way.
The Bible exhorts us to believe in God. Mark 1:15 tells us to "repent and believe the gospel." When we as believers share our faith and the truths of our beliefs with unbelievers and they begin to reject our message, we begin trying to weave the evidences together in such a way that they will automatically believe. At least that's what we hope will happen. Just like a trial lawyer uses the evidence in court to persuade and convince the jury that a person is or is not innocent, we begin trying to piece together a sufficient amount of evidence to be persuasive with our friends, thinking that if we can put enough of it together in just the right way to answer their objections, they'll have to realize the truth of the gospel and believe.
One of the problems I see with this is that it assumes the kind of belief that we described above, the kind that we engage in passively. It's something that happens to us. But the portions of scripture that exhort us to believe in God and His gospel are saying something very different about belief. The Bible refers to it as an act of the will. It is not passive, it is purposed. It is willful and is exercised with a particular object in mind.
We have a word for this kind of belief.
Trust.
In our culture we use both words interchangeably at times. At the altar as a man and a woman get married they will often recite vows to one another. These may include promises to love, to honor, to cherish, to forsake all others, etc. As one is verbalizing these vows, the other is listening and [hopefully] believing. This is not the same kind of belief that was described above. This is trust. The person listening to the vows is trusting their new spouse to be true to his/her word.
When God says 'believe', He is telling us to trust Him.
Using the example of creation, we might say, "I trust God, therefore I believe the earth was created by Him."
Now, here's the real issue. As we look at those verses in the Bible that refer to this kind of belief, or trust, we notice that God is not asking us to trust Him. He is telling us to trust Him. It is a command, and it only makes sense if it is indeed trust that He is talking about, and not passive belief.
So if the exhortation is a command directed at a person's will, and not a request directed at a person's ability to evaluate (reason about) evidence, then should we be so concerned with trying to persuade with well crafted arguments and evidences? I don't want to be misunderstood at this point. I'm not at all implying that reasonable arguments and proofs can't be given, or that faith and reason somehow do not go together. I am simply questioning whether our evangelistic efforts ought to appeal to a person's reason when it seems that the appeals made in the Bible are to a person's will.
But how can we expect them to trust God as an act of the will if belief in Him goes against their reason?
I don't think evidential apologetics in evangelism is completely out of order. And if a person has some real intellectual barriers to faith, evidences can help get them past those. But I will say that I think this is rarely the case. When a person says, "I can't believe because of A, B, and C" I would have to say that most of the time it is not the case that they cannot believe. Most likely, they simply don't like A, B, or C, or what they imply and therefore refuse to believe. And if they refuse to believe, then we are back to exercising the will.
Nowhere in scripture do we see God saying "Believe! Unless you don't agree." Whether or not we agree with A, B, or C, we are still commanded to believe. To trust. And I think this is a point where many unbelievers are mistaken. They seem to assume that we as believers agree with everything in scripture. On this point they mistake submission for agreement. There are in fact things in scripture that I either don't agree with or that simply rub me the wrong way, but since I have chosen to trust God I submit myself to Him and His word in those areas. This is at the heart of Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21. One was agreeable and one wasn't, but the agreeable one disobeyed and the other obeyed. Jesus points to the fact that obedience in action, not verbal (or intellectual) agreement was the key issue.
Then God is tyrant! Only a tyrant would demand such obedience regardless of agreement.
Is He? Or is He, in fact, infinitely benevolent? Is a passenger in a car being unreasonable if he demands that the driver stop because he knows they are heading for a cliff? Of course not. Does this depend at all on whether or not the driver agrees with him?
God knows the consequences of disobedience to Him. His command to trust Him is motivated not by some sort of tyranical desire for power, but by His loving desire to bring His creation to eternal safety and security.
And even if it wasn't, what is it that He has commanded us to trust Him with? The command to trust Him isn't without an object. It is a command to trust that He has already done all that is necessary and sufficient to pay the penalty for our sin, and that we simply need to trust that He will account that payment to us as righteousness, completely doing away with any need for us to try to pay that debt by our own merits.
Some tyrant; wanting to force liberty, justification, and freedom from death on us poor human beings!
I have had friends say to me, as we talked about faith in God, "You can't make me believe. No one can make me believe. It has to come from within me." They were saying this in defiance, basically saying "There's nothing you can say to convince me." But I think that ironically, in their defiance, they were actually right on both counts. There may not have been anything I could have said that would have been so irrefutable as to produce that passive kind of belief. And on the second point, they were correct also. It does have to come from within them. That's the act of the will. They have to make the decision to believe...
...to trust.
The Bible exhorts us to believe in God. Mark 1:15 tells us to "repent and believe the gospel." When we as believers share our faith and the truths of our beliefs with unbelievers and they begin to reject our message, we begin trying to weave the evidences together in such a way that they will automatically believe. At least that's what we hope will happen. Just like a trial lawyer uses the evidence in court to persuade and convince the jury that a person is or is not innocent, we begin trying to piece together a sufficient amount of evidence to be persuasive with our friends, thinking that if we can put enough of it together in just the right way to answer their objections, they'll have to realize the truth of the gospel and believe.
One of the problems I see with this is that it assumes the kind of belief that we described above, the kind that we engage in passively. It's something that happens to us. But the portions of scripture that exhort us to believe in God and His gospel are saying something very different about belief. The Bible refers to it as an act of the will. It is not passive, it is purposed. It is willful and is exercised with a particular object in mind.
We have a word for this kind of belief.
Trust.
In our culture we use both words interchangeably at times. At the altar as a man and a woman get married they will often recite vows to one another. These may include promises to love, to honor, to cherish, to forsake all others, etc. As one is verbalizing these vows, the other is listening and [hopefully] believing. This is not the same kind of belief that was described above. This is trust. The person listening to the vows is trusting their new spouse to be true to his/her word.
When God says 'believe', He is telling us to trust Him.
Using the example of creation, we might say, "I trust God, therefore I believe the earth was created by Him."
Now, here's the real issue. As we look at those verses in the Bible that refer to this kind of belief, or trust, we notice that God is not asking us to trust Him. He is telling us to trust Him. It is a command, and it only makes sense if it is indeed trust that He is talking about, and not passive belief.
So if the exhortation is a command directed at a person's will, and not a request directed at a person's ability to evaluate (reason about) evidence, then should we be so concerned with trying to persuade with well crafted arguments and evidences? I don't want to be misunderstood at this point. I'm not at all implying that reasonable arguments and proofs can't be given, or that faith and reason somehow do not go together. I am simply questioning whether our evangelistic efforts ought to appeal to a person's reason when it seems that the appeals made in the Bible are to a person's will.
But how can we expect them to trust God as an act of the will if belief in Him goes against their reason?
I don't think evidential apologetics in evangelism is completely out of order. And if a person has some real intellectual barriers to faith, evidences can help get them past those. But I will say that I think this is rarely the case. When a person says, "I can't believe because of A, B, and C" I would have to say that most of the time it is not the case that they cannot believe. Most likely, they simply don't like A, B, or C, or what they imply and therefore refuse to believe. And if they refuse to believe, then we are back to exercising the will.
Nowhere in scripture do we see God saying "Believe! Unless you don't agree." Whether or not we agree with A, B, or C, we are still commanded to believe. To trust. And I think this is a point where many unbelievers are mistaken. They seem to assume that we as believers agree with everything in scripture. On this point they mistake submission for agreement. There are in fact things in scripture that I either don't agree with or that simply rub me the wrong way, but since I have chosen to trust God I submit myself to Him and His word in those areas. This is at the heart of Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21. One was agreeable and one wasn't, but the agreeable one disobeyed and the other obeyed. Jesus points to the fact that obedience in action, not verbal (or intellectual) agreement was the key issue.
Then God is tyrant! Only a tyrant would demand such obedience regardless of agreement.
Is He? Or is He, in fact, infinitely benevolent? Is a passenger in a car being unreasonable if he demands that the driver stop because he knows they are heading for a cliff? Of course not. Does this depend at all on whether or not the driver agrees with him?
God knows the consequences of disobedience to Him. His command to trust Him is motivated not by some sort of tyranical desire for power, but by His loving desire to bring His creation to eternal safety and security.
And even if it wasn't, what is it that He has commanded us to trust Him with? The command to trust Him isn't without an object. It is a command to trust that He has already done all that is necessary and sufficient to pay the penalty for our sin, and that we simply need to trust that He will account that payment to us as righteousness, completely doing away with any need for us to try to pay that debt by our own merits.
Some tyrant; wanting to force liberty, justification, and freedom from death on us poor human beings!
I have had friends say to me, as we talked about faith in God, "You can't make me believe. No one can make me believe. It has to come from within me." They were saying this in defiance, basically saying "There's nothing you can say to convince me." But I think that ironically, in their defiance, they were actually right on both counts. There may not have been anything I could have said that would have been so irrefutable as to produce that passive kind of belief. And on the second point, they were correct also. It does have to come from within them. That's the act of the will. They have to make the decision to believe...
...to trust.
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