HWJD? How Would Jesus Dress?

God's gathering of a people from all nations shows that the defining mark of Christianity is not clothes, customs, language, or music. Rather, it is something altogether different. Something greater. Something deeper. Something more divine.

Food for the Stomach. The Stomach for the Soul?

What if God's primary purpose in making our bodies need food was to show our need for Him?

That would mean that all this work of your life, the toil, the discipline, the striving just to eat, is all a part of a huge act to show us how we need God. It would mean that every bite I take, every flavor I savor, every bit of energy I gain is mean to remind me of my need for God. It would mean that God created this whole planet, Sun, and life that grows food just so that we could understand what He means to our souls.

Praise You God!

Christianity the Religion of Science. Western Christianity the Scientific Religion

As Gospel has primarily advanced westward from its early days in Jerusalem and the Ancient Near East, it has wrought many other advances in history - primarily western history. The philosophical development of the individual person which leads to property rights and eventually capitalism; a work ethic that teaches us value is found in working not in escaping; and the belief that the world was meant to be understood and explored which leads to science.

The overtly Christian West, historically attributed with the development of Science, perplexes modern minds at how its origins could be at such odds with its results. How is it that Christianity and Science are supposedly so staunchly opposed so that neither side has any business discussing the other. My only point here is that it is Christianity (born from Judaism) that gave rise to the wonderful world of Science and continues to provide necessarily motivating axioms on which Science will forever reside.

But Christianity in the West has not be left unchanged by its effects. The ripples its splash onto the caused have come back to affect the stone. The great tension between traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant views reside on the amount of difference they see between Justification and Sanctification. The Catholic sees them almost as the same and will define it as such. Therefore when they talk about who is responsible for what in the act of justi-sanctification, both God and man is the correct answer. The Protestant, on the other hand, balks at this at declares that only God justifies a man. Nevertheless, this Lutheran will protect the need for a man to fight for his own sanctification through the power of God provided by the Holy Spirit.

This issue is much less likely to surface in the East where definitions are less important and much more flexibility is allowed. Why? Why do Chinese consider themselves Communist and Capitalist? Because they are not bound to the strict scientific precision of Western definitions, but feel the freedom to leave things imprecisely defined as fuzzy logic would have things. Something can be 50 degrees Farenheit. And depending on what that item is it can be hot, cold, or room temperature. That can be a good, bad, or terrible thing. Human language is so often imprecise and so to impose strict definitions on words (a very scientific thing to do, and something hermeneutic students would readily claim) is a very Western ideal, that may not prove useful to a text written in an Eastern context.

Love God and Hate My Brother?

O that I would be this man.

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into PRACTICE. And the God of peace will be with you.

Is it really possible that these men are my friends? Please, please, please consider the truths of what they are saying.

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing

Lord, would you bring me to these people that their tongues may sing your praise?

Living in the Shadows: China's Internal Migrants

Election: An arbitrary choice?

Unconditional Election as set forward in the Reformed Tradition states that the elect are those whom God has sovereignly chosen to receive His mercy through faith in Christ Jesus, not because of anything they have done, would do, or even a predisposition of who they would be. It is His unconditional setting of His affections on a people for the purpose of "making a people eager to do good".

"But then, if it doesn't depend on what a person does, or who they are, then whether or not they are elect is completely arbitrary. God just chooses this one and doesn't choose that one!" the struggling mind quickly surmises. This objection is as easily heard in the Armenian camp as it is felt in the Reformed. It is a scary thought that if true, would leave to an unshakable sense of purposelessness.

But this objection is the child of several fatal misconceptions.

1. What we do is more meaningful than what God decides

We subtly place our actions and decisions above God's decisions in the worth scale when we object that God's decisions are arbitrary. We think that in order for God to choose someone it must be based on what we have done. That He would have to look forward and see our actions in order to validate the decision. We think that He owes us a look at our resumes before choosing us, or casting us aside. If He is left to His own choice without seeing or knowing our actions we feel that the decision is unfounded and thus arbitrary. But how prideful are we? Are the creatures' actions necessary for the creator's decisions. Does a potter need to see how a pot will behave before he designs it with a purpose? By no means! In fact it is exactly the opposite. Because the potter designs the pot in a certain determines that it will be used in that way.

The problem is that we feel like our actions are the ultimate determiners of meaning. We feel like if we do something wrong then we deserve punishment, and if we do something right we deserve praise. It is our actions that determine meaning. Thus if God was free from our actions in choosing, then He was free from meaning, and thus, we conclude, His decision was arbitrary. But it is God's decisions that are the definitions of meaning. Because He has determined them, they therefore have meaning, just as with the potter above.

This discussion of cause and effect leads to the following misconception.

2. God is bound by time and knowledge that is revealed at some other time

Because we can only perceive the world through time and space we have an extremely difficult time forgetting that God is not bound by such material things. We place Him at a time before there was time and forget that He exists out of time. Therefore, we actually enable the discussion at all! Confining God by time allows us to talk about a time when God didn't know what we would do and what we would be like. We talk as if when He made the decision to choose us as if it was distinct from His eternally separate and always existing state.

The truth of the matter is that God is not bound by time, and therefore to even talk about God choosing us in a way that is dependent on future knowledge is ridiculous. Yes the Scripture speaks of God's choosing us before the beginning of the world, but this is merely a reduction of the Truth for our minds, because it is near impossible for us to grasp the fact that God's choosing us before the beginning of the world is His choosing us now!

3. God makes decisions like we make decisions

This is why Isaiah had to remind us that God's thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts. We think of God as making decisions without full knowledge of their outcome, because that is, after all, how we make ours. We live in shades of probability, while He lives in perfect light. His decisions are all together different from ours.

We also mistakenly think of God as making decisions in reaction to other things, again because this is our experience. We decide to do something because something else happens. But God is completely proactive in all of His decisions. There is no other motivator, no other cause, no other reason. He is the Motivation. He is the Cause. He is the Reason. It is completely within Himself that decisions are made. Not out of necessity from some outside pressure, but out of will of His own heart.

4. Love has to be motivated by some desirable quality in the object

Finally, our last misconception lends itself most readily to the heartache of the accusation of God's arbitrary choice. To image a husband who simply chose us by pinning the tail on the donkey, or drawing the name out of the hat, is of utmost detestation in our minds! We couldn't bear to think that someone would chose us just because, but that is because we still think of love as being motivated primarily by the desirability of the object.

Our error is this: forgetting we, in our fallen sinful state, stand as completely detestable creatures worthy of the utmost wrath and immediate death. We forget and gloss over the fact that there is NOTHING within us of our own, that is desirable to God. There is nothing that we have that is not already His. There is nothing that we could offer Him that would add to His collection or increase His standing, or help Him in any way.

So what then does it mean that He loves us? If there is nothing in us that is pleasing to Him, and everything within us is detestable before Him, what does it mean that He sets His affection on us?

This is a profound and fundamental reworking of our definition of love. His love for us, is His own decision. He loves us because He does. It is circular reasoning because the reason is God. He is His own reason. This truth, however, is not without its shadow in human experience. Eventually in the relationship between a man and a woman (if it is in the pattern of Scripture) will come to a place of covenant. And at some point either the man or the woman is bound to ask, "Why do you love me?" Whether out loud or in his/her heart one of them will ask that question. But if the lover is asked, only one answer is the ultimate response, "Because I love you." That is to say he loves her, because he loves her. His affections are spent on her because he decided to spend his affections on her. So it is with God. He loves us, because He loves us. The decision is not arbitrary in the sense that we mean it. It is full of passion and joy, if only we would be willing to admit that we are not worth the time of day that He gives us.

God's choices are not arbitrary simply because they are God's choices.

Election: A Doctrine of the Future, Not the Past

Debates rage on even today as to the nature of our salvation. How are we saved? By the unrestrained sovereign and therefore arbitrary choice of God which we have no way to resist, or by the free will of rational modern man willing and able to either receive God's free and gracious gift or reject it out of hardness of heart.

Both answers to the question of the reason for our salvation (both the Reformed and Armenian) place the dominant emphasis of the question on the reason for our salvation. What are we saved by? Which leads us to say things like we are saved because [insert opinion here]. This focus leads us to look backward. Whether to our conversion experience when we first received Christ or all the way back to eternity past when the Spirit of God purposed to set His affections on a limited number of people. Either way, we walk backwards. Proceeding forward through time but constantly fixed on the events of the past.

Instead, I believe the purpose of the New Testament (and even the Old) in revealing the mystery of God's predestining a people, was not for us to look back but for us to look forward. He tells us that He has chosen us in order that we might live in a certain way. He is looking for a response.

To walk facing forward in this truth is to stop asking "By what was I saved?" and start asking "For what am I saved?" Instead of saying, "We are saved because...," we need to start saying, "We are saved so that...". After all it is for works, not by them that we are saved. To focus on the method or the how behind our salvation is very much like a junior high kid retelling his friends how he got on the basketball team. Depending on his mood it was because he had such a stellar tryout, or because the coach had already decided who he was going to pick. Either way for this kid to continue bragging about his position without any action is ridiculous. Why then do we suppose we can stop and argue about how we got here? The focus, now that the kid is on the team, should be asking the coach what his role is on the team. "Why [as in for what purpose] am I here?" he should ask the coach. The training and practice, and game time starts now.

The Bible teaches us that we are blessed to be a blessing. Like wise I believe that we need to start believing and walking out the fact that we are chosen in order to be choosers. God chose us (the outcast, socially awkward losers who had no chance of saving themselves from the perils of an eternal Hell) so that we might go to the outcasts, the socially awkward losers around us to save them from the same perils. We are redeemed that we might be redeemers. We are healed, that we might be healers. We are forgiven, that we might be forgivers. We are loved, that we might be lovers. We are freed, that we might be freedom-fighters. We are blessed, that we might be a blessing.

So why are you saved? Not by what, but for what. What is the destiny that God has chosen for you? What are the good works that He has set out before the creation of the world for you to walk in? How will you be conformed to the image of the Son that He has chosen for you to be conformed to? For what have you been saved?

What You Say Is What You Get

But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice...Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— (Phil 1:18, 3:2-3)

With Paul, what you say is what truly matters. Though bound in prison for preaching the True Gospel full of integrity, while others where masquerading around pretentiously presenting the Gospel for their own gain, he rejoiced! He was delighted, that even in treacherous motives, they were preaching the True Gospel.

Later in the book, however, he calls some others dogs, men who do evil, mutilators of the flesh. Why the sudden change Paul? Because, whether from false motives or true, they were preaching a different gospel! Which is actually no gospel at all.

We so often worry about our motives, or the motives of other in preaching. What did they intend? What are they thinking? Why did they say that? But this is not for us to judge. If they preach Christ, rejoice! Delight in the proclamation of the truth! If they don't, even if they are well-meaning, do not budge. Don't relent stand firm until the clarity and truth of the Gospel has been recovered.

Church History Timeline

This is a pretty sweet summary of the major events in church history based off one of the easiest to read histories ever.

Church History Timeline

Blood Sucking Evangelists

"The earth is full of His glory," the cherubim and seraphim proclaim in Isaiah. Many people wrestle over how this is the case when there is so much discord and evil among humans, the ones created in God's image. Rather than being bothered by humans, I was more torn over the animals that seemed to serve no beneficial purpose, but only spread disease, death, and pain.

The mosquito, for example, seemed to me to have no real part in bringing glory to the Maker of Heaven and Earth. I failed to see how such an annoying pest could ever bring any glory to his Creator. One day I almost sarcastically asked Jared Townsley how the mosquito brought glory to God. Then, with a patranizing look in his eyes and gentle tone of voice he laid bare this wonderful truth:

Mosquitoes are insects which pierce the flesh of men to draw on their blood, and without this blood they will perish. This tiny pest preaches most clearly the truths of the Christian Gospel. We, mankind, like mosquitoes were a stentch in God's nostrils through our rebellion and sin. And we, just like mosquitoes, pierced the Son of God who became a man so that we might drink of His blood. After all, without His blood we will perish and be condemned through our own rebellion to eternal damnation. It is by His wounds that we are healed.

Therefore, may every mosquito bite, may ever forgotten can of deet, and every buzz in our ears remind our hearts and souls of the majesty and wonder of the Gospel, and the wisdom of the One who authored the story in Nature as well as His Word!

God through Light Made Time and Space

When I first learned about God's eternity (timelessness) I thought of Him existing in Eternity Past and Eternity Future. When I learned about God's omnipresence (dimensionlessness) I imagine Him being everywhere. The problem with both of these notions is that they simply extend the thoughts of time and space to infinity; while God exists independently of both.

What is so intriguing about this fact is that this means that both time and space were created. We must be careful here, though. For we cannot say that there was a time when time did not exist. Nor can we utter any other foolish quip such as "there was a time when space did not exist", because He created them simultaneously. How?

When God created light, He created the constant velocity. In creating velocity He defines the eternity of the world as we know it in time and space. The equation for velocity is: velocity = distance / time. So, by making a constant velocity, God created space and time! After all, for something to have velocity, it has to have somewhere to go. And if it travels from one place to another, time must pass if the velocity is finite (which the speed of light is). So when God said, "Let there be light" He did not merely make something that shines. No, He established the fundamental characteristics of our universe as we know it. He created dimensions which we understand as space and distance. He created succession of events which we call time.

Do you feel the weight of this thought? When God created light, He created movement. For lack of better language, when light began to exist, something moved for the very first time. Nothing had moved prior (Of course this is one of those muddled statements, because to speak of 'before' and 'prior' make no sense without the creation of light).

May our hearts and minds tremble at the greatness of our God who with a single statement created space and time.