An Atheist's Anthem ...

 “If I only saw a sign, I would believe.”  This is a familiar chorus I have heard from nearly every non-believer I have encountered.  Sadly, it is also a familiar refrain I have heard from many Christians.  We look for the impossible to validate a faith that does not make any sense.  We ask to see the impossible for ourselves, unwilling to take the words or testimony of others on this account.  It needs to be personal.  It needs to be tangible.  Or else, how could I believe?  And in this we destroy our journey-of-faith and wish for certainty in its place.  But be honest, how could you ever be certain, of the impossible?  Even if you witness a single incident of it, will one witness be enough to believe in all the others, and for the rest of your life?  So if you must witness more than one incident, how many will be enough?  All of them?  Would it really take time travel to finally make us believe that what is recorded in scripture was real?  If you are looking here, you are cheating yourself.  There is another venue, and something a lot more personal for each of us.

To begin, certainty is not the goal.  If I asked you to trust me, how would you go about it?  You might evaluate our interactions, our history together.  You might conclude that if my behavior was always in line with your expectations, that you could extend trust to me, and then see what happens.  But therein lies the catch.  No matter how I have behaved with you in the past, no matter how consistent our history may be, each time you extend trust to me, you take a risk.  If past is prologue, then you may believe the risk to be low.  But that “belief” is still a “belief” you hold about my trustworthiness, based on a myriad of factors, but none the less a “belief” that I will not let you down.  This is how trust works. 

You may trust your mom for example, because your mom has demonstrated that she loves you.  Even if she screws up, she still loves you, though her mistake proves her human.  You may even elect to extend trust to her again after a huge mistake, because there has been only one (or few you know about), and generally she does not make them.  But even with mom (mistakes or no), every time you extend trust, you hold a “belief” that it is worth it, to trust her.  Certainty is impossible.  Because you cannot absolutely predict what anyone else (including God) may do, or why they do it.  In the end, you have ideas about it, guesses about it, even educated guesses about it.  But behavior is a tricky thing to absolutely predict, and so people surprise us sometimes (for better or for worse).  To trust anyone, is to embrace “belief”, at the exclusion of absolute certainty.

But where God is concerned, it is more blame that goes around, than trust.  That has directly to do with our picture of “who or what” God is.  The media, our parents, our church, our friends, our professors, may have all played a role in forming an image in your mind about who God is.  Suffice it to say, it boils down to one of 2 main images.  Most folks think God is a version of Santa Clause.  We go to Him to ask for stuff.  We are happy when we get it.  Mad when we don’t.  But are generally quick to ruthlessly blame God for anything bad that happens, under the logic that Santa should have been watching and been able to prevent the bad stuff before it ever happened.  After all, He has done it for others, why not me?  Way too many Christians have this exact image of God, despite all the scriptures.  Most Atheists just don’t believe in any kind of Santa Clause, or any god, but if there were a God, He would be to blame for everything.

In the Santa Clause picture of God, no trust is required.  Neither is certainty.  If you get the stuff you asked for, hallelujah.  If not, it must not be in God’s time yet.  So Santa has a slot machine sort of response to what you ask for, the odds are low, but you never know.  How could faith ever grow in you, if this is the image of God you believe in, or have the most experience with?  And believe me, Satan is WAY too happy to keep this image of God in your mind.  Perhaps enough to grant you some of those wishes himself, in order for you to never shed this image of the God you pray to.  But our real God, needs us to trust Him.  That trust is a critical component of His ability to save us – from us.  Denying yourself to let some random God you don’t really know remake who you are, is just not likely.  Better to keep the Santa image, and just hope for the best.

So God’s problem is getting you to stop thinking of Him in terms of doling out rewards and punishments, and start thinking of Him for the Being He truly is.  The other image of God (a saving God).  God wants to save you, from you.  He loves you (being the primary and singular motive of His).  God sees sin as the punishment and the addictive disease.  And He has only one way to rid you of it.  But for that to work, you have to trust Him enough to let Him do it, in spite of how it looks.  Trust, in spite of common sense.  Trust, in spite of what everyone else tells you.  Trust, that He is able to do the impossible in you, where history demonstrates, you are clearly unable to do it.  So if that is His mission, and trust is what He needs from you.  Offering you certainty does nothing to accomplish it.  If you witness a 1,000 different acts of the impossible, all you will have learned is that it is possible for God to do the impossible.  You might have already imagined that.  But you will still have no reason to let Him reconstruct who you are.  A thousand elements of certainty do not build trust, they build resentment.  Back to the Santa Clause image – now that I have seen 1,000 impossible things – I intend to open complaints about why I did not benefit from any of them.  A thousand acts of love and impossibility for others, does me not one bit of good.  So now I am mad at Santa, because there was only coal in my stocking, while my neighbor got Barbie’s playhouse.

The first problem with asking for signs, is that it does not bring trust.  The second, is that it will only make you mad they were not for you, or selfish if they were (who does not want more miracles in their own lives).  And lastly they are usually requested as a condition of belief (instead of a result of it) doing nothing to foster trust, so there will never be enough of them, to really make a believer out of you.  You will either find a way to let your skepticism reduce the impossible, to a scientifically explainable trick (or perhaps a random set of circumstances that worked out just right despite the incredible odds, like say the hypothesis of evolution) - or you will find you have an insatiable appetite for more signs, at the cost of what you profess is a belief.  In any case, the mission God has to save you, from you, by remaking you fails because He grants your wishes for signs as a condition of belief.  A change in thinking, on the other hand, will pull back the veil that has blinded your eyes to the impossible.  What you witness after a change in how you perceive life, is going to be mind blowing.  Sounds crazy right now, but that’s the point.  It is crazy.  But it is also real.  And it will be a lot more personal to you than you could possibly imagine now.

Take as a case in point the story of two types of people in the gospel of Matthew the 27^th chapter.  Picking up in verse 38 it reads … “Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.”  You could argue these men might have been believers in the Jewish faith (though obviously not perfect observers of the Law).  It is not known exactly what they believed at least from Matthew’s account.  However we know from other versions of the good news, that one repented before he died, the other did not.  Dieing in the company of known criminals tends to make one look like a criminal even if this is not true.  This death will do nothing to uplift the reputation of Christ.  But Jesus does not care about His reputation.  In His trial all manner of lies were told about Him, and His response was perfect silence.  No condemnation, no calling people out on their sins, only silence.  But Jesus was eager to speak to anyone who seeks salvation.  When the dying theif seeks Jesus, Jesus responds, no matter what kind of physical pain He was in.  When that same theif was hurling insults at Him, Jesus remained silent.

Matthew continues in verse 39 saying … “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, [verse 40] And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”  Dying in the company of thieves, and up on a Roman cross, was decidedly NOT the sign the Jewish people were looking for where it comes to proving Jesus was God.  These were believers.  These were those who studied scriptures.  And yet their ideas about what God was supposed to do – that is, to throw off Roman oppression and setup a Kingdom that would last forever – overpowered all the other texts and prophecies that predicted exactly this part of the mission of God to save us.  “Believers” who desired something else of God, and refused to accept what God was actually doing to truly answer their prayers.  When Santa does not behave how we want Him to, what good is Santa right?  And so in this case, the very fact Jesus was actually fulfilling prophecy, was the very fact that disqualified Him as being the Messiah in their minds.  Sound familiar?

How often do we ask God for a thing, and threaten Him that if He does not do it, we will believe no longer?  Save me.  Save my child.  Save my spouse.  From the disease and death that stalk them.  If the results are not what we expect – we become angry and decide there cannot be a God – or else why did He not answer my prayer.  But perhaps He did, just not in the way you expected.  Perhaps from Gods point of view, saving you, your child, your spouse, for eternity is most important to all of you.  Should earthly life end today, and infinite life begin tomorrow, reunited, with infinite love in all of your hearts – is this not the preferred outcome all of you would want, even if it comes at the price of shortening how long you live in this world today?  Let’s say instead of focusing on the eternal, that God allowed you the answer to your prayers, and saved that life in the here and now.  As time passes, you, or your child, or your spouse, begin to change (not for the better).  Perhaps over time, one of you decides there is no God at all, and if there is, He is not worth following.  Sin is more “fun”, instead of the disease it truly is.  If that is how you meet your end in this world, and the eternal world is sacrificed in the process.  Did God really do what was in your best interest all those years ago when He saved you only to meet this new end?  And God knows what you will choose long before it happens.  Santa might let this play out.  But God would rather it didn’t.  God would prefer to cherish you while your free will choice reciprocates that love, rather than let you exist long enough to discard it under the weight of sin’s embrace.

So because God does not do what we want or expect, does not make Him any less trustworthy.  Keep in mind Jesus was doing what ALL of us need for salvation.  Not trying to prove Himself to nay-sayers at the time and place of His death.  Matthew continues in verse 41 saying … “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, [verse 42] He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.”  And there we have it, the Athiest’s Anthem coming right out of the mouths of the very top leadership of the church at that time.  What image of God do you suppose they had, the one of a saving God who would die in our place, and fulfill prophecy – or the one of Santa who doles out punishment and reward emphasis on punishment.  And had Jesus descended off that cross in front of their eyes, gliding right down in front of them fully healed, what do you suppose their response would have been?  They would have hated Him all the more, because now Roman oppression still abounded, and Jesus would be impossible to kill after all.  Think about it, they already had ALL the previous miracles Jesus did to consider in weighing whether or not He was the Messiah, and NONE of them changed their course of action or belief.  They chose to dismiss every previous sign and still pursue killing Him.

And should Jesus have chosen to assuage His own ego, by proving to these priests He truly did have this power, what kind of God does that truly make Him?  A God of ego?  Who would gladly sacrifice our eternal considerations for those of the moment?  How could we be saved then?  It is often our expectations of what God should do, that could never be met anyway.  Because we come from a place of ego and selfishness, where God comes from a totally opposite perspective.  Jesus believes it is better to die to save all of us, than to do anything shortsighted, and gain nothing.  Jesus never used any of His power to benefit Himself.  Instead He used it unceasingly on us, the objects of His love, restoring us, removing the pain of sin and death from us.  Our restoration tops the mind of a saving God.  Not just getting rid our physical diseases, but getting rid of the way more deadly sinful disease of bad motives driving bad choices we continue to embrace.  Curing us of our desire to sin, is way more important.  Saving us from an eternal perspective way more important than saving us in the moment.

The ridicule continues as Matthew writes picking up in verse 43 saying … “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. [verse 44] The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.”  Matthew hears the mockery of the thieves, but misses the repentance of the one.  Here we have an example of Jesus suffering the same fate as we do from time to time.  Jesus trusted in His Father.  And yet, He was dying, very painfully in this world.  The Father had NO interest in seeing His Son be tortured and die.  But the Father had a GREAT interest in seeing all of humanity be saved and reconciled unto Himself.  The death of His Son was that price.  In order that the need for Justice be satisfied.  So Jesus dies, in extreme pain we inflicted.  And the Father must sit there in silence and watch.  The eternal salvation outweighing the salvation of the moment.  This is how great our God desires to save us in the eternal realm, not just the here and now.  It is a different way of thinking.

So the repentant thief represents one kind of person, the mocking priests another.  For those mocking priests, no sign would ever be enough.  And frankly the next section of texts are going to have some doozies.  For the repentant thief however, for those of us who seek salvation from Jesus, what will happen in us is a change.  You will note that repentant theif was NOT saved from the cross.  He died in this world, but with certainty about his own place in the next one.  And change began to occur even in the worst dying circumstances any of us can imagine.  We too will become different than we are today.  Not because we work for it.  But because we begin to choose to trust Him, and allow Him to remake us however He sees fit.  Then change is surely on its way in us.  We read scripture differently.  We begin to see love as the primary motivation, instead of some wild afterthought.  We begin to reason differently.  And over time, the blinders of bad choices, the blinders of doubt, fall away – and what is revealed is a regular diatribe of the impossible happening all the time.  For example, the changing of hearts.  Not just of others, but of my own.  Learning how to love differently, and more deeply, than you had ever imagined.  No seminar could ever get this done.  But allowing Jesus full access sure does.  Without Jesus, things tend to degenerate.  But with Jesus, things tend to improve, especially in areas where it matters the most.

That sign, that impossibility, is very personal, very tangible, and you will live with its benefit every day of your life.  Does it cure your cancer?  No.  It could.  But it does not have to.  It fixes something more important.  The quality of your days expands exponentially, whether you are beset by physical pain and disease, or whether you are healed from them.  Keep in mind, disease does not exist in heaven.  So whether here or there, you are destined to see disease, pain and death no more.  And what happens to the desire to see a sign now?  You lose the selfishness part of that.  Instead of asking for goodies for yourself, you have no thought of yourself.  But you are swamped with thoughts of others.  You want to BE a sign for someone else, help them, meet their need if you can, no matter how you are feeling at the time.  And where you are powerless to meet their need, you do ask God for the impossible.  Not as a condition of belief, but because you are SURE He can, and will do what is right for that person’s eternal interest.  Where it comes to the removal of sin, 100% guarantee He wants that.  Where it comes to all the other worldly stuff, His gifts must fall in line with our salvation.  Knowing He longs to give them, and knowing He must hold them back, if they would add to our downfall.

Life, instead of existence, is a very tangible, and personal thing.  No one else can define it for you.  No one else can deny the impossible you are witness to in your heart and life.  For you know what is true for you.  You see what God does in your life.  What you suffer from in the eyes of others matters not.  Whether you are burdened with wealth, sickness, persecution – those do not represent the favor or curse of God.  They represent the danger of evil in this world, and are used by Satan to try to get people to believe in a Santa Clause image of God doling out rewards and punishments.  But for the one who truly believes, and chooses to truly trust, the curtain is pulled back – and the impossible is revealed every day no matter what our circumstances or positions may be.  Certainty has never been the goal.  Trust in spite of not knowing has always been it.  That kind of trust prevents the next Satan in the world to come.  And creates a new creature of you in the world we live in today.

 

And Lead Us Not Into Temptation ...

Gold tried in a fire is said to become pure, and even more brilliant in shine than it was before.  But from the perspective of the gold, not such a thrilling prospect.  The reward may be worth the upheaval of the journey, but that is hard to see at the beginning, and nearly impossible to see in the midst.  Gold, and humans, often see themselves as “good enough” in whatever condition they find themselves.  To enter the furnace in order to emerge finer still, is something almost none of us would choose to do.  So most often, the choice is made by fate, or by a design beyond our sight and imagination.  It makes logical sense to us that faith that has never been tested, is at best an unknown quantity.  Faith that has been through the crucible and emerged on the other side even more brilliant than before, is a faith that can be relied upon more than the untested one. 

Faith that is untested could prove fatal when it matters the most.  Faith that is untested could be discarded without formal notice; but by the aggregation of competing philosophies and theories that require no “constriction” of our desires and lives.  Discarded faith is often cast aside because the gold of our characters believes it is simply good enough.  Atheists are quick to tell you that “good” behavior requires no God to see it in action.  Good people are everywhere, and none require God to instantiate that good behavior.  In the world of the Atheist, there is no understanding of “temptation”.  There is only choice to do one thing or another.  Morality absent in the decision, or subjective in the decision.  Faith discarded.  Faith killed upon an altar of self-reliance.  Untested.  And finally un-needed.

But those Christians who examine this rarely think of themselves as candidates for a discarded faith.  And simultaneously we desire a life of ease, and free from the burdens that conflict with the world must inevitably bring.  So for us temptation continues to exist.  Temptation for those of faith represents decisions where the morality is known, one for service, one for selfish.  But despite our knowledge of which is which, our desire, long crafted in this world, longs for the selfish, despite knowing better.  We continue to want the wrong things.  So the hold they have on us is deep and abiding.  Chains of slavery masquerading as simple desires for little white elements of destruction.  They look innocuous.  But the tentacles of these desires that would lead us on the wrong path seem to reach as deep in us as our DNA.  Heredity or environment, matters not if the result is to find ourselves on the wrong side of temptation.  The pain we cause is real, remains, and spreads like a virus.

For the Savior of our world, without the repetition of failure, temptation was to be something epic and singular.  Unlike us, He was to face something we could not face.  Matthew begins his account in chapter four of his gospel picking up in verse 1 saying … “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”  Context matters here.  Jesus has just been baptized.  His formal ministry has just begun.  It has been proclaimed by John the Baptist, and by the voice of the Father God Himself, and the Spirit in the form of a dove.  No greater public spectacle has been witnessed.  Jesus has just symbolically laid down His life in the waters and emerged purified before God ready to start a ministry.  And literally seconds later the first thing He must face is direction by the Spirit of God Himself to travel into the wilderness, away from the people, away from anything that could sustain a man, and prepare for temptation of the devil himself.

And silly Christians; we somehow think that emerging from the baptismal waters will insulate us from the devil’s temptations.  If anything, it intensifies the devils attempts to bring us back into the creatures who needed the baptismal waters in the first place.  Baptism is not the sealing of our faith, it is only a step in the journey of our faith.  Baptism does not keep temptation away from us, it invites the fury of Satan to see us returned to our former condition.  But the devil need not win.  Yet Jesus did not just stumble into temptation.  He was led to it.  He did not just decide to go face off with the devil and see who wins.  The Spirit of God literally drove Him into the desert to face His (or ours) worst fears.  Failure here would not result in a quick forgiveness.  Jesus was to be the instrument of forgiveness.  If Jesus messed up, there might not ever be forgiveness.  The pressure was to be enormous.

Matthew continues in verse 2 … “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.”  The deck was to be stacked in Satan’s favor.  Starvation would drive the body of Jesus to a barely alive condition.  Hallucinations could be only the beginning.  To say he was hungry was the understatement of the millennia.  Most men would give anything they had to eat.  Esau’s test in a similar vein had come and gone with an entire birthright given away.  But the birthright here was the entire human race. 

Matthew continues in verse 3 saying … “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”  The argument of the Atheist is born.  This temptation was not about bread or hunger, this was about one thing … prove it.  “If”, notice the pronounced use of the word “if”; if you are the Son of God.  It does not even matter what follows next.  In the day of Jesus it was a temptation to use divine power on Himself, which Jesus never did throughout His life.  But in our day, it is to “fill in the blank”.  Atheists always promise reform of their beliefs and positions if our God just proves that He exists, in physical terms, in literal terms, in any kind of manner that requires zero faith.  Let faith remain dead, and furnish only a tangible means of proof that God is God.  For untested faith, discarded faith, it would lead only to the result it sees today.  Should any proof actually be provided, it would be discarded as “not enough”.  The lack of faith can always find an excuse NOT to believe.

Matthew continues in verse 4 saying … “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Let us not lose sight of the subtlety of this challenge to His identity.  Jesus does not directly argue with the chief of all Atheists.  Instead He turns to scripture, to the Word of God, to answer.  Jesus recites scripture to Satan.  Our response to our Atheist friends should not be a direct argument with their logic and assumptions.  It should be to put the salvation of our friends squarely into the mouth of God.  We should call out to our God to save our friends, lift them up before the throne of God, that He may save them.  We in effect give God permission to answer our prayers even if the Atheists would never reach out on his own.  This mechanism may be responsible for more converted souls into His kingdom than we will ever know.

Matthew continues in verse 5 saying … “Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,”  In this gesture the devil reveals he is a creature beyond the limits of humanity.  The devil has supernatural abilities, from the perspective of men.  Perhaps Satan hoped that this gesture might affirm his disguise of being cloaked in light, trying to impersonate a heavenly angel and servant of God.  As he still comes to us.  Satan does not appear to the believer as a cloven hoofed, red painted, forked tail creature with horns.  That imagery might work in a renaissance painting, but in modern society this image provides him with nothing but cover to appear as a creature of light.  Satan is not interested in clarity, he is the master of obfuscation.  He tells you to do what you want to do, and then tells you it is the right thing to do, that God wants you to do it.  Just like he is doing to Jesus so many years ago.

Matthew continues in verse 6 saying … “And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. [verse 7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  This is a second challenge to the identity of God.  The word “if” prominently used.  This time Satan challenges Jesus as the Son of God, but also challenges that God will uphold the promises He has offered in scripture.  It is a double insult.  But it remains so terribly effective in our day.  We pursue a course we know we should not.  Then once down the evil path, we call on God to save us from the consequences of our actions, and expect Him to do it, and blame Him if He does not.

While God has promised to protect us from forces beyond our sight, and dangers that Satan would otherwise pose to us.  God has not promised to protect us from our own stupidity.  When we disregard common sense, the laws of physics, and the word of God … we put ourselves in a place where we should expect normal results, not ones influenced by the power of God.  It is not that God cannot protect us, but it is that “we” are “tempting” God to save us.  Mercy, is not the same thing as expectation.  Pity, is not the same thing as expectation.  God is not to blame for the stupidity of our choices, though often His love for us finds a way to save us in spite of ourselves.

Matthew continues in verse 8 saying … “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; [verse 9] And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”  Satan no longer care to challenge the identity of Jesus, now all he cares about is “who” we worship.  Turn your eyes away from God.  Worship self.  Just once.  How bad could it be?  One time for all this.  He offers the Atheist freedom from the restraints that religion imposes.  He offers the Christian a fulfillment of the texts that imply they must “do” something to be saved beyond accept the gift of God.  He offers Jesus an easy way out.  No pain, no death, just compliance and all this is yours.  But his offer was a lie.  And his offers are still a lie.

Matthew continues in verse 10 saying … “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. [verse 11] Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.”  We would like to picture a victorious Christ, full of strength and vigor telling Satan off, driving him away, and hiking back down the mountain to begin picking up disciples.  But this is not how it was.  Human frailty insured it.  An emaciated, starving, to the point of death, Jesus uses His last ounce of strength to resist for the final time the temptations of Satan.  Satan does not leave Him because he was driven away.  He leaves Jesus because there are no more temptations left to offer.  Nothing left to say.  Jesus will not be defeated by the temptations man succumbed to.

After these words, Jesus collapses.  And now the promises of God are fulfilled in the heart break of heaven.  Angels who were veiled from Him, now appear in full glory bringing food, water, and love to the Savior who without their aid might have died on the spot.  They revive the broken body of man, ever compliant with the direction of the Spirit.  Jesus has not run from temptation as Jonah might have done.  He has not lost trust in God as Adam did.  He offers Himself here, even to the point of His life as few others did.  Whatever the challenge He has neither shrunk from it, or been defeated by it.  It is the gold tried in the fire.  He was in all pointed tempted as we are.  But without our failures.  Jesus wanted different things.  We need different wants as well.

Temptations remain effective against us, because we still want the wrong things.  We need different desires.  We need ones put within us by Jesus Christ.  Not ones we think up ourselves, but one’s placed within us by a divine hand.  This can only happen when we let go of our desires to Jesus Christ.  When we surrender what we “want” to Jesus, He can take them from us.  He breaks our chains of slavery, and in their place puts desires we “should” have, and come to appreciate very much.  Over time, we come to learn that what He puts in us to want, are the best things to want.  We cannot trust ourselves, or our desires.  But we can trust Him fully with our salvation, and our characters.  We can trust Him to save our Atheist friends and family we lift up to Him in prayer, as we trust Him to save us, and our Christian brothers and sisters who we also lift up to Him in prayer.

This was a crucible for Jesus.  This was a fire experience.  It was not a casual Sunday drive through the park (or the desert).  It was a life threatening, dangerous fire, that could have consumed the hope of the human race.  It was a fire no one would choose to go through.  And it carved a memory in Him He could not forget.  When asked later by His disciples to teach them how to pray, the words … and lead us not into temptation … are included.  These words were not just part of some formula.  They were a reflection of these 40 days of hunger and temptation in the desert of His ministry.  No one would choose to be led there.  And so He reminds us to ask God, please not to be led into this kind of fire. 

Our faith will be tested.  But as our desires change, perhaps temptation will no longer be the mechanism of test.  Perhaps then only trust will remain the trying fire.  Do we trust that our God strong enough to save this Atheist who wants nothing to do with Him?  Do I trust God completely with my own salvation?  After all my track record is not that good.  Nevertheless; Lead us not …

 

A Bigger God ...

Ever had a project at work that was important to you, that you wanted to not only do well, but to do better than anyone, maybe even yourself, thought possible?  Or perhaps you wanted to make Christmas for your child, an event they could not even begin to estimate, something beyond their wildest expectations.  There are times when the efforts we take on, we take on with an internal passion, a drive to make the results something spectacular, something epic.  Our measuring stick is not one imposed on us by other people, or even by convention.  Instead we plan to far exceed anything “normal” convention may have imposed and attempt to pull off something singular.  If we were to do this regularly, it might have the effect of raising the expectations of others that this is “just what we do”.  Doing something spectacular might get lost in the perceptions of others because we do it so often.  But what happens when exceeding expectations is not just a periodic goal we undertake, but a core part of who we are?  Jesus faced this.

But Jesus faced perhaps a bigger dilemma, how to contain the infinite in the limited package of humanity, and effectively teach us who God is, and how much God loves.  The people in the days of Christ had preconceived ideas about who the Messiah was, and what the Messiah was supposed to do.  The most important role the Messiah was supposed to play was that of liberator-in-chief.  The Messiah was supposed to throw off the yoke of Roman oppression and establish Israel as the eternal kingdom, based in Jerusalem forever more.  This goal pleased the hearts of the people.  It had a very direct and personal impact on all of them.  No more taxes.  No more unjust torture and crucifixion.  No more influence of pagan gods, and idols strewn throughout the land.  Getting rid of the Romans would help “purify” the Temple, and allow the people to lead better lives, where they were independent, and in need of nothing.  This view was scripturally based.  It was in error, but it originated from reading and interpreting their existing Bible, the same one we use today.  They had simply misread the texts having to do with the “second” coming of Christ, with those having to do with the “first” coming.  Because this interpretation was pleasing to them, they stuck with it, ignoring all the other texts that seemed to be in conflict with it.  Are we any different today?

So Jesus had a compounded problem.  He would NOT be filling the role of conqueror at this time, and establishing His final kingdom forever and ever.  In this, the people were going to be inclined to completely reject Him as the Messiah, indeed the religious leadership already had.  But Jesus was going to show us the role of Physician-in-Chief.  There was not a single malady, a single illness or condition, that Christ would not heal and restore to perfection.  Even death was not an obstacle to Christ where it came to restoring us and removing our pain.  But our God is bigger than just the ultimate doctor who knows our bodies and minds better than anyone who ever lived.  Jesus would also take on the role of Teacher-in-Chief.  In this Jesus would teach the scriptures as they were meant to be taught, in perfection, with clarity and authority, as it was He who had inspired them in the first place.  Then there was the challenge of revealing to us the love of the Father, of revealing to us His motives, and His love.  Living a life of perfect love for others, never once prioritizing love for self in any way, in fact, He seemed totally devoid of it.  This contrast between sin (the love of self), and perfection (the love of others), was so deep, our diseased souls could hardly grasp it.

Jesus would not be doing what the people expected, and they were sure to be disappointed.  But He would be doing so much else, exceeding so many expectations, that trying to “understand” who He was, was sure to be tough.  Then the tougher conundrum; Jesus was our Messiah, but He was also God, a much bigger God than man could ever understand.  Jesus was our Creator.  That was a role, that would boggle the minds of the people in His own day, and now in ours.  The Bible begins with Moses attempting to quantify in human words, our origin founded in the act of Creation performed by Christ.  In seven days, Moses takes us from the abyss, to a fully formed planet teeming with life, including the first man fashioned in the image of God.  None of the people in the days of Jesus had any notion of the Messiah being the Creator.  They had lost sight of that.  They forgot that the original promise was made in the garden of Eden to Adam and Eve.  It was “that God” who was coming to save them.  It was “that Creator” who was destined to finally put Satan out of his place in this world.  This role was not one the people would expect or understand.

At some point our minds just cannot absorb any more.  It would take faith to believe in a virgin birth, in the ability for our God to be big enough to create Himself in the womb of Mary without the aid of man.  It would take faith to believe that our God could be both man and God at one time.  It would take further faith to accept that our God was big enough to heal anything wrong with us, including our desire to sin.  It would take further faith to accept He was going to be killed, and then be resurrected as our Savior.  In the days of Christ, having just this much faith and understanding was enough to contend with it.  Adding to that, the rest of who Jesus is, our Creator, and an Infinite God was simply too much for the people of His day.  So frequently, Jesus revealed this part of Himself, but asked those who saw it, to keep it secret, and keep it to themselves.  The last thing He needed, was a distracting debate about the power and role of our Creator in the guise of the Messiah.

Peter recalls some of this dilemma to John Mark in his gospel in chapter eight.  Peter further sets an interesting context.  Jesus has just rebuked the Pharisees who wanted a display of His power, before they would believe.  Christ had told them there would be no sign given, but in the very next verses we see here, yet another miracle is performed.  Perhaps this miracle illustrates a union of the roles Jesus had within Him.  Mark chronicles the events picking up in verse 22 saying … “And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. [verse 23] And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.”  Having Jesus perform a miracle to heal someone was common place by now, the spectacular had become normal.  So why was this healing called out by Peter as worthy to be in the gospels?  What was it so special here?  Perhaps the first clue is in the sequence of events, the first thing Jesus does is lead this blind man by the hand until they are out of town (away from the people).

The healing for this man is somewhat unique in that Jesus is looking to do it away from the crowds.  This will be a personal interaction between our Creator and the created.  The second clue is that in the mechanics of healing this man, He does not simply speak the words, or drag His garments over the man.  He takes the very personal action of putting spit into the eyes of this man.  I believe the difference between this blind man, and perhaps others He opened the eyes of (and there were many); is that this man perhaps had no eyes to start with.  Either from birth defect, or accident, or Roman torture, I believe this man’s eyes had been removed.  So Jesus takes him completely away from everyone, and only then puts spit into his eyes and asks if he can see yet.  The man replies in verse 24 saying … “And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. [verse 25] After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”  Complete healing does not come at once in this case.  It took 2 actions.  I believe the first was restoring or re-creating eyes that had been lost or removed.  The second action by Christ was fine-tuning the vision and nerves to give him 20:20 sight.  The role Jesus was playing here was bigger than Messiah, bigger than Doctor, or Teacher, or Revealer of the Father.  Jesus was enacting His role as our Creator, fulfilling a promise given directly to Adam and Eve way back in the garden.  What happened next was a further clue in this regard.

John Mark continues in verse 26 saying … “And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.”  Jesus wanted this re-creation kept completely secret by the man.  In fact, by the next few verses it would seem Jesus left the city and the area immediately following this event.  The Pharisees had demanded a sign of Jesus as if He was some circus performer doing tricks for the crowd for the compensation of acceptance.  But Jesus was our Creator, who had given His promise to Adam and Eve in a very personal way all the way back in the garden.  He was here not performing tricks, but doing the work of creation, making something out of nothing once again.  Not all of His healings required privacy and secrecy, but some did.  Jesus may not have asked His followers in His day to accept Him in the role of Creator as well as that of Messiah, but it did not prevent Him from being both of those things.  Our God is far bigger than how we like to picture Him.  To be God, is to be something the created will perhaps never fully comprehend, as only the Creator has that knowledge.

In our day, many Christians have come to accept that perhaps our world was never “created” at all, let alone within seven days.  They believe that science is at odds with the notion of a fully functioning, fully aged universe that comes into being in 7 days, by a power that is infinite.  Instead, they substitute trillions of years or “time” to replace what Moses said our God did in a week.  Time allows natural evolution to occur that follows a big bang that no scientist can fully explain the origins of either.  While single cells of a living organism can divide and grow into virtually anything, the combination of periodic elements generated from a big bang has yet to produce even one of them.  If we have life, we can reproduce life, but getting life in the first place seems to be elusive.  Then comes our aging cycle, or “why we die” is another mystery outside of a Biblical explanation, for if life could evolve, why should it decay at all?  But no matter the questions or information we do not know; it all boils down to a decision one makes about what to believe.  When Christians discard the role of Jesus as our Creator, they discard the original promise He made in the garden to Adam and Eve.  By denying God the ability to create, we deny Him the ability to re-create, or restore His creation.  Once we embark on denying how big our God is, we eventually make Him no more than equal with ourselves, in fact elevating ourselves to be God.

I believe Peter included this story to show us that Jesus was more than just Messiah; that our God is bigger than the capacity of our mind’s limitations.  I believe stories like this one were in effect, a nod to Adam and Eve that the promise made to them was kept by the Creator who made it.  Because we have such a hard time wrapping our minds around these ideas, says more about us, than it does about our God.  No matter how great we think our God is; He is bigger than that …

 

Secret Missions [part two] ...

Peter recites to John Mark in his gospel chapter seven two stories of where Jesus was attempting to reveal the Father’s love in secret, attempting to avoid publicity in His mission.  In our previous study, we examined the first incident which was designed to test the faith of a mother, and reveal the character of the companions of Christ.  In examining the second story here, Peter is significantly more detailed about the mechanics of the healing, than in the other miracles Christ performed.  Peter goes into the details.  The question is why?  Ultimately the publicity of the mission of the Messiah cannot be controlled or subdued.  Whether by excited recipients who simply cannot keep silent about what Christ has done for them (oh, that we had such people in our day), or by demons who work in concert to drive the people to make Him king whether He wants it or not; the missions of Christ are widely known, and widely publicized.  So Peter does not seem to need to correlate secrecy with how this sick man was healed, yet he spends time talking about both.  Perhaps it is the details themselves that warrant deeper attention.

The story begins in no special way picking up in verse 31 saying … “And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.”  Jesus is traveling again.  He moves another significant distance.  Was this perhaps to avoid publicity by moving away from a region that seemed inundated with stories of Him, or was this perhaps to find the one who would be brought to Him in so desperate a need.  It is hard to say.  The story continues in verse 32 saying … “And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.”  Here is where a few details appear.  First, the person afflicted has more than one health problem.  He is deaf, and subsequently has a speech impediment.  Now, most people that cannot hear, also have a strange, or impacted way of speaking.  But the attention Peter pays to this condition, and the subsequent healing Christ does specifically for this man’s ability to talk, tells us this was not just a simple cause and effect from the deafness.  It was something more.

Next, the request of the people to heal this man, included the clause “put His hand upon him”.  The people in this story either have not heard of Christ healing simply by dragging His garments over someone, like the woman who started this trend some time ago across the Sea of Galilee.  Or they are unfamiliar with Christ simply speaking the words of assurance like He did to the last mother, who found her daughter healed even though the daughter never was actually in the presence of Christ.  These people bent on helping this man, wanted a personal touch by Christ.  Perhaps this was the most common way people were aware of Jesus’ healing powers, and they were simply requesting He do it for their friend.  No matter, Jesus did not refuse them.

The story continues in verse 33 saying … “And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; [verse 34] And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. [verse 35] And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”  More interesting correlations arise in these verses.  You will note first, Jesus takes the impacted man away from the multitude.  Jesus wants a more private, perhaps a more personal interaction with this man.  Jesus is not looking for publicity; He is searching for more privacy.  If He had wanted the crowds to see it, He could have made a spectacle of this man’s healing, but He did not.  Next, the touch requested is granted in probably a more personal way, than Jews who had been told they must obsess about ceremonial cleanings would like.  Jesus did not reach out and shake hands with this sick man, He put His fingers right into the guy’s ears.  Further, He spit on His own fingers, and then He touched the man’s very tongue, where most of the taste buds, and sensitivity is in your mouth I might add.

If we correlate what is happening here with the Gospel of John regarding the lame man, we might reach a conclusion, that Christ is literally creating flesh, and organs, where they are missing either partially or in whole.  This particular healing is not about lowering a fever, or putting strength into existing organs and tissue, I believe it is about creating some, where they did not exist before.  Remembering that we are created from dirt, and are composed of mostly water, Christ our Creator, may be doing what He did back in Eden, albeit on a much more limited scale.  In this instance, our Creator is restoring something that has been messed up or is partially missing.  Not only does Jesus take these very personal touching actions with the impacted sick man, He then follows all of this with a prayer to His Father.  He looks up to heaven before speaking Himself.  This is to acknowledge that His Father is the source of all love, and all restorative power.  Then before speaking Peter says that Jesus sighed.  Perhaps Jesus too is frustrated that sin, and Satan have so corrupted our world, and our bodies, that this man suffers from more from what has been done.  Perhaps Jesus too, would have us ALL restored, both physically and spiritually, but no one in the crowd is asking for spiritual restoration, which arguably is more important. 

He then speaks in front of the man, a sort of command, the word “Ephphatha” which is immediately interpreted as “be opened”.  The command is not directly to the man to speak and hear properly.  It is instead to the impacted organs to be capable of perfect hearing, and perfect speech.  The organs are no longer to be an impediment to the man’s ability to hear and speak.  And the man immediately tested his new abilities and spoke plainly.  Sometimes we miss the subtlety of God providing us gifts, and then watching what we do with them.  The organs were restored, they were re-created by Christ, but the man was not commanded to pray, or give thanks, or say “I love you” to his family.  In point of fact, he could have used foul language, and swore at his enemies, now knowing they would understand him perfectly.  Our senses are a gift to us from our creator.  How we choose to employ them is not commanded by Christ, but is witnessed by Christ.  How we use our senses reveals our hearts, to have our hearts restored and re-created by Christ is the bigger accomplishment, and the one we are each in most need of.

Then Peter resumes the recollection, for the need for secrecy, as the story continues in verse 36 saying … “And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;” Christ tells the friends of the man, and man himself, not to publicize what He has done for them.  The first directive, the first commandment given to this grateful man, is to keep silent about who healed him, and how He did it.  The recreation of missing tissue, above all other types of healing, reveals Jesus as our Creator.  This revelation was too controversial in Israel.  People who might otherwise listen to the life-giving words of Jesus, would tune Him out, if the Creator title were associated with His name and ministry.  The people needed not to know everything plainly yet, because they were not ready to know it yet.  Even the disciples of Christ were not completely ready yet.  Knowing Jesus was our creator was just too much.  But the one thing Jesus asked of them, was the one thing they completely disobeyed Him about.

Christ had a larger goal of ministry in mind, that these men, in their gratitude, were messing up.  Jesus does not curse them for this.  Jesus does not take back His healing.  He knew beforehand that this man would not keep his mouth shut, yet He heals him anyway.  Would you have done it.?  This is part of the mystery of our salvation.  We are created by God, uniquely, even though He ultimately knows whether we will decide for Him, or against Him.  We are given free will to choose, even when the choice is a bad one.  Jesus did not restrict His love from this man, even though the man would mess up the plans of Jesus.  Jesus does not restrict giving us gifts, from our senses, to the money in our wallets, even though we often choose to mess up what we do with them.  The love of our Lord is consistent, even though ours is not. 

It is a mistake to think that the gifts our Lord gives to us are an indication of us being saved.  He gives to those who are saved, and those who are unsaved.  He loves both camps of people.  He does not love one more than the other, loving both perpetrator and victim equally.  His heart breaks because of the pain the perpetrator causes himself and his victim, and His heart breaks for what pain the sin of the perpetrator has caused to the victim, for what the victim must now go through.  We will never know the depth of pain we cause our God, who has perfect love for us, by what we choose to do, and how we choose not to love others when we could.   But perhaps, we could lift the sigh of our Lord, if we were to seek spiritual restoration, and re-creation, by asking for this kind of healing for ourselves.  Perhaps we could make His heart leap for joy, as we submit to Him, our actions, our desires, and the core of who we are to be remade by Him as He sees fit.  No matter what healing God does for our bodies, it is the healing of our souls that He most wants us to publicize.

People will inevitably seek Jesus for healing, for primarily selfish reasons where it comes to our bodies.  We want full functionality, and long life, where our physical bodies are concerned.  But to crave perfection, to crave a life with a complete lack of sin, these are the cravings that change the world, and reflect salvation rooted in Christ.  Publicizing what Jesus can do for the spiritually sick, is what it is all about.  The selfish do not run to Christ to fix that, they only run to Him for other reasons.  But if we would dare to offer the core of who we are, and what we want, to Jesus, we would find a restoration that is far more important than the state of our bodies, and one that lasts far longer.  The people could not understand this deeper mission of Christ, they saw only its physical manifestations as the story concludes in verse 37 saying … “And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

People, then and now, are “beyond measure astonished” to find out that our Lord is also our Creator.  Those who would replace Genesis with a more scientific origin, are in addition, removing the creating power from Jesus.  They strip Jesus of His ability to re-create, as they strip Him of His original creation.  Where science appears to conflict with the Bible, it is science that remains incomplete in our understanding.  Because compared with the miraculous transformation of the human heart, there is no scientific, or evolutionary counterpart that can sufficiently explain the phenomenon.  To be saved by Jesus Christ, is an experience that cannot be denigrated by equations and probabilities.  To have the core of who we are, altered to be in harmony with Him, and with His laws of love, is a singular experience, and the one He was trying to reveal to the people in His age, and in ours.

 

Cornerstone of Faith ...

What is truth?  What is fact?  Lawyers argue “the facts of case” each seeking to convince a jury that their own position is the correct one.  But how can both be right, or wrong?  Discerning truth becomes a challenging thing when evil’s influence in pervasive and powerful.  Evil cannot defeat truth, but it can mask it, obfuscate it, bury it in enigma, or make it seem unpalatable.  If evil is able to convince you to question the source of truth, how can you ever know what truth is?  With so many competing voices that all claim to know what truth is, we are faced with the dilemma of choosing where to put our faith and trust.  It is easy to say we will trust our God, but then who’s God?  The God described in the Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, the Talmud perhaps, the Quran, Hindu writings, those of Confucius, where do we turn to find a basis, a cornerstone from which to discern truth?

Christians point to the Bible as the source of truth.  But Lucifer has not been idle in putting forth arguments to destroy the credibility of the scriptures.  The idea that truth has been somehow “lost in translation” from scrolls that date back nearly 3000 years has merit from a logical perspective.  Any child who has ever sat in a circle and played the gossip game can attest to this.  Then there is the dilemma that even ancient texts written in the time of the Bible may not be directly attributable to sources we believe to be inspired.  Recently a “gospel of Judas” and a “gospel of Mary Magdalene” have been discovered.  Neither agrees with New Testament writings but both have been put forth as viable additions to our current collection.  Even those that were in existence at the council of Nicaea were debated with some being excluded from what we now refer to as the New Testament.  Add to this the Catholic church’s position that scripture must be the sole province of priests to interpret and what scripture there is had to be preserved and copied in caves for nearly a millennia until the printing press was invented.  Even if we accept the current collection of writings that compose the books of our Bible, there exists today no less than 10 significant “versions” of the same text.  Attempts to simplify the language of the King James version has resulted in widely differing interpretations of the same base texts. 

Science, or rather men who profess that scientific thinking is the only viable method for finding truth, have proposed that the “evidence” of evolution outweighs the miraculous accounts of our creation in the Book of Genesis, therefore the portions of scripture which deal with the fantastic must be allegories written by enlightened philosophers in an attempt to make men better than they are.  These scientists have all but declared that there can be no basis in truth of the Bible, at best idealistic ideas, at worst superstitions designed to control men by appealing to their fears of the unknown and death.  There are “creation scientists” who seek out evidence supporting the ideas of creation and the flood for instance, but as they approach science with a predefined set of ideas they are derided by their peers.  Many modern Christians seek to find a balance between the big bang / evolution and the accounts written in scripture – deciding that where science can be proven, it is there that scripture is in error.

Atheists claim their ideology, or rather lack of ideology, is the fastest growing segment in modernized nations.  The implication is that with higher education, and higher IQ, comes a lack of belief in scriptures.  Atheists assert that intellect is the key to the discovery of truth, and being bound to texts of ancient superstition is merely a cherished part of our past.  They assert that freedom from the ideas of punishment or reward at death liberate one to live in the here and now.  They have a point actually.

It is a wonder that any Christian can maintain faith in our Bible.  But then what is faith but a choice as to what to believe.  The evolutionist chooses to believe that despite the inability to take base elements from the periodic table and create life, it was done anyway.  They believe that even though it requires billions of years as the variable to evolve, combined with trillion to one odds, it happened as theorized anyway.  There are many facts on the other side of the evolutionist aisle, enough to cause doubt in the mind of any true scientist, making the theory of evolution one of choice as well.  The Atheist too must also make a choice not to believe in anything beyond what they can see, feel, touch, and describe.  Atheists do not do well with mysteries, and completely discard supernatural phenomenon, until it happens to them.  Belief is about choice first and foremost.

To answer the question of the accuracy of the content of our Bible, and the validity of the books that were included in it, one must examine the question “why” would it be our basis of truth.  The purpose of the Bible is not to define condemnation for evil, it takes no such volumes to accomplish such an obvious goal.  Rather, the Bible is a love letter that speaks incessantly of hope, love and redemption.  The Bible is given to man by a God who explains why evil exists, how to be free from it, what love means, and of an eternal destiny that will unite us with Him in the absence of all evil permanently.  The Bible is about making an informed decision as to whether to follow the God who stands behind its inspiration.  If the Bible is a lie, then the God who purports to be behind it does not exist.  There is no middle ground.  God cannot expect man to make an informed decision to follow Him based on partial truth, omissions of critical facts, or ideas that were lost in translation.  Man can only choose to love God if an accurate picture of God is provided in scripture.

If what is in the Bible is incomplete, then we do not have enough information to make our decision for or against the God of the Bible.  If the information in the Bible has been altered by the designs of men, then the God who stands behind it cares not enough to preserve His own letter to us.  If the information is mere allegory then why is it presented as fact.  If the Bible is a lie, whether in part, or in full, then hope is a lie – redemption is a myth – purpose and individuality are meaningless – and death is the only real escape from the evil that surrounds us and inhabits us.  The Bible if accurate, answers all these dilemmas and gives us a complete picture of love and of evil.  Not all the things that occur in scripture are by the will of God.  Many are acts committed by men in various circumstances that illustrate evil and the consequences of evil.  But with every instance of death or destruction in the scriptures are even more instances of mercy whether accepted or rejected.

Those Christians who seek to integrate competing ideas of evolutionism and creationism are attempting to blend completely counter ideologies.  We were either created by design, or not.  There can be no middle ground.  To try to annul portions of scripture is to deny the power of the God who stands behind them.  Why bother with scripture at all, if the God behind it is a liar.  Those Christians who believe we should take the writings of Paul out of the Bible, equally deny the God who has stood behind our Bible for nearly 2000 years.  The Bible has been preserved at great peril by those who chose to abandon their homes and run from persecution in order to preserve the sacred word.  To have them die in vain for the writings of Paul, so that “modern enlightened” Christians who do not like what Paul says can remove them only now, is to have their martyred deaths and persecuted lives for nothing.  That too is not a picture of a God in whom I would serve.

But if the Bible is not a lie, if it is indeed the absolute truth, then love is real – a finality to evil is real, both in me and around me.  If the Bible is the unvarnished truth it does not change over time.  The study of it will yield even more truth as we submit ourselves to the God who was its inspiration and protector for all these generations.  The God who means to communicate with us through the instrument of His written word, longs to lead us to understand it as it was meant to be understood.  He longs to show us the deeper meaning in the stories, lives, writings, songs, failures, and successes we find throughout scripture.  He does not bury the truth in numerology that would require a supercomputer to decode.  He presents it plainly in language the audience of the day could understand.  Its principles and values live on as if written only yesterday.  Its message is truly timeless, as truth itself is timeless.

One could argue that every religion has “sacred’ texts, and that our Bible is no different than any other competing set of written works.  But there is one difference that remains, in every other religious ideology lives the notion that service must be offered in order for favor to be granted.  Only does our Bible teach about a God who does the work of saving His creations from evil – even while they choose to number themselves as His enemies.  Our God reaches out to us in love, even before we know who He is.  Our God does the work of reforming, transforming, and recreating a new character within us as we submit to Him.  In every other ideology, man finds enlightenment through his actions or abstentions – only in the Bible is man offered wisdom as a gift.  Only in the Bible are the enemies of God loved by Him, with incessant offers to save them from the evil they choose to embrace.  This difference is substantial.  It is the reason why Christianity and the scriptures behind it offer a better life than ALL the other competing ideologies.  Man simply cannot save himself.  This is a demonstrable scientific fact.  Only the Bible offers man a future without evil as a gift.

Those who argue that the Spirit of God has informed them to disregard portions of scripture are essentially arguing that God cannot make up His own mind about His word.  If God is the God behind the scriptures, why would His Spirit decide some of them should not be there?  In order for God to be God He must be consistent.  In order for truth to be truth it too must be consistent and accurate.  If the Bible contains inaccuracies or partial truths it cannot claim to be “the” truth.  Our interpretations of the meaning of scripture varies, but the words themselves remain, unchanged, and there by the intentions of a loving God.

Scripture can be used as a cornerstone of faith.  One must ultimately make a choice as to what to believe.  But putting our faith in scripture is our best hope to discover what truth is.  It is a choice to put our faith in something over which we have no control.  It is an act of trust in the God who is behind the words in His book.  It then becomes a doorway into discovering who He is, what it means to love and be loved.  It is our gateway to truth.  We will finally know truth, when we see Him face to face.  For Christ is truth.  Everything about Him is truth.  Everything about His Father, and His Spirit are truth.  There is no guile, no deceit, no omission of facts, no exaggerations, no partial truths in anything that God has said to us, or will ever say to us.  It will forever be only truth, and with that truth will come the freedom of truth, the beauty of truth, and the truly profound discovery of truth itself.  I make this choice gladly and would happily encourage anyone else to do the same.  In God, and in His word, I safely put my trust, for He alone is truth.