Where stands it written?

 

"Var står det skrivet?" is the actual title of today's article, which, when translated from the original Swedish, means "Where is it written?" This was one of the common phrases from the Free Church movement in Europe and the United States. The meaning of the phrase is an encouragement to go back to scripture as the primary authority of our faith. Now, I could talk about a lot of different doctrinal controversies where this phrase might be used, but instead, I want to describe how I use the idea in interpersonal conflict resolution.

As a Christian, it is important to be willing to hear criticisms and accept correction. So when someone comes and tells you that you have hurt them or done something wrong, it is important to listen to them and be willing to examine yourself. God wants to examine our hearts (see Psalm 139:23-24), and He often uses other people to help us see where we have gone wrong (see Proverbs 27:6). On the other hand, just because someone is upset with you or perceives that you have wronged them does not mean you have actually sinned. It is important to examine yourself in light of what scripture says. Second Timothy 3:16-17 says, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." So we can and should use scripture to correct us and help us grow.

Therefore, both when examining ourselves and when considering correcting another person, we should look to scripture and ask, "Where is it written?" In other words, how have I specifically broken a command of God, either according to the letter of the law or the spirit of the law? Likewise, when we feel wronged by someone else or think they have sinned, we should try to be specific about how they sinned. We should think about what specifically happened and how that made us feel (it's a good idea to write it out), and then search the scriptures for how these actions, words, or attitudes violated specific principles and commandments that God has given us.

A good example of this can be found in an article by Rosaria Butterfield, where she identifies what she did wrong by going to scripture and referencing the specific commandment. She goes further and identifies the motives and why those were wrong. She also explains why she is making a public apology for a public sin.

Getting specific from scripture helps in a number of ways. First, when we have sinned, we cannot know what to apologize for or what to correct unless we know specifically what we have done. Therefore, identifying the specific wrong helps to correct it so it will not happen again. Second, it takes the burden away from the interpersonal conflict and helps us see that sin is first and foremost against our Creator and Judge. It is easy to get defensive when you believe that the offense is primarily against another imperfect human. You can look at their faults and fail to take your own wrongs seriously. But when you know that you have sinned against the perfect and holy God, you know you cannot use the excuse of being no worse than the other person (See Psalm 51:4 for David's example of repentance to God).

Third, sometimes we discover that, in fact, there is no sin for which we need to repent. People might feel bad or take offense for any number of reasons, and sometimes their emotions are directed at the wrong cause. Emotions tell us something about what is going on in us but are not very accurate indicators of the truth. Therefore, we need to examine them to discover what is causing them and whether our thoughts and feelings conform to the truth of scripture and the reality of the world around us.

If we ask, "Where stands it written?" before and during a conflict, we will more likely get to the truth of what is happening. Then rather than escalating it, we can either defuse it by discovering that no sin had taken place or resolve it by repentance and forgiveness for the specific wrongs done.

Rejoice Always?

 

 

 

I was recently working on memorizing Philippians 4:4, which says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice." This passage does not recommend being joyful; rather, it commands us to be joyful and gives us the object of our joy, namely the Lord. This reminded me of a teaching from Pastor John Piper, where he encourages his listeners to fight for joy. The ideas that we are commanded to be joyful and that we should fight for joy seem counterintuitive because joy appears to be an attitude or emotion that we cannot simply generate spontaneously when we want it. Yet if God does command it (see 1 Thessalonians 5:16 as well), then God also gives us the ability to fulfill His commands.

So, how can we rejoice always? First, we have to understand our own limitedness and the brokenness in the world, which means being happy or having the emotion of happiness all the time is not realistic, at least at the beginning of our joy journey. I have conducted several funerals in the last year, and while there is often smiling and laughter as we consider the good times, there is certainly a time to cry and not be happy when sad things happen. Likewise, there are times when we are simply tired and worn out from long days of life, and even if we are not exactly sad in those moments, we are not exactly happy either. On the other hand, the words for joy in the Bible are about having the emotion of joy, so how can we be joyful always? The answer must lie in finding a deeper sense of joy in life that flows beneath all the day-to-day events and shapes how we view the events of life. Therefore, the command is not simply to be joyful on its own, but rather to be joyful in the Lord and establish our foundation of joy on Him.

To maintain this constant state of joyfulness, we need to nurture our relationship with the Lord. We need to incorporate practices into our lives where we spend time seeing the glory and beauty of the Lord, allowing Him to remind us of who He is, who we are, and what our eternal purpose in life is. A famous Christian teacher from the 19th century, George Müller, learned the lesson of daily finding his joy in the Lord. He said, "I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord... Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, so that my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed, and that through the Word of God, while meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experiential communion with the Lord."

Even if we have a morning practice of finding our joy in the Lord, we will often lose our joy throughout the day when we encounter difficult situations, difficult people, boring times, pain, and temptations to find joy in other things. So, another practice of joy that God is working on in my life right now is that when I become aware of a non-joyful attitude, I need to stop and fight for my joy in the Lord. I need to reflect on the truths that I know. I need to pray and ask God for help. I need to preach to myself and believe what He has said. In each situation, by stopping and reminding myself of the truths I have learned from Him, I can release the cares and concerns and be reminded of the big picture where God is in control, and I am in His hands. I can then rest in peace and have joy in the Lord.

Rejoicing always does not come naturally. In fact, God calls us to have a supernatural attitude that we can only have when we find our joy in Him.

PS. Here is an article by John Piper about how to fight for joy, where some of these ideas came from.

The Reason for Worship

The other day, I was listening to Coleman Hughes' podcast, "Conversations with Coleman," and he was interviewing, Samaneri Jayasāra, a Buddhist Nun. I have done a little study on Buddhism in the past, and I was curious to learn what more. Coleman is an atheist, but he often has interesting guest who deepen my understanding of the world. Furthermore, because he is not a Christian, he helps me to understand a different point of view. I like to see how he views life and how he handles day to day situations.

He had this particular guest on because meditation is one of the ways that he has attempted to deal with the stresses of life. Samaneri apparently teaches some of the practices of Buddhism on her youtube channel, including how to meditate. She has lots of people who watch her channel because like Coleman they have stresses or have not found peace in this world, and she appears to have found a path to contentment through her Buddhist practices.

I was curious to know if she came to some of the same conclusions that I had read and heard from other Buddhists, namely that the key to peace is to get rid of desire. Whenever you fight internal strife, you just identify what you are desiring and then deny the reality of your need for that thing. When you stop desiring things, you stop having discontentment, and you can feel peaceful. In fact Samaneri did promote such a view of the world, and in fact promoted a view that in fact nothing in the world is real. Once you realize that then your meditation becomes a practice of reminding yourself of the unreality of the things you desire.

Now I can see several real problems with this perspective. First, it calls people to deny their own experience. Yes, we often desire things that we cannot attain such as money, health, or fantasy relationships, but that does not mean all of reality is an illusion. The physical world is real. Your body is real. Relationships are real. In fact, we even seem to have an internal sense of the goodness and then the brokenness of things in the world. When we see a baby, a flower, a mountain, the stars, or a thunderhead, we see incredible beauty and have a desire to extol their beauty. The same goes for good tasting food, beautiful music, and love between a man and woman. Likewise, when we see good things used wrongly or abused, we are angered because we know that something has gone wrong with the goodness. Our internal nature seems to confirm both Genesis 1 where God calls His creation good, and Genesis 3, where the whole of creation was affected by sin. Buddhism seems to recognize the suffering caused by the brokenness in the world, and proposes the solution to deny the reality of both the bad and the good.

This leads to my second problem with Buddhism, namely that is it primarily a solution to a negative problem, namely suffering, but gives us no way to go toward or extol the good. Since there is no ultimate reality, Samaneri's form of Buddhism is like many forms, ultimately atheistic, in that they do not propose a higher being or reality to explain the good things of the world. Coleman is someone who also does not believe in a personal god, although I believe he comes at it more from a scientistic or naturalism mindset, so he also does not have anything higher that gives us a reason to believe that the beauty and goodness are real things beyond our personal experience of them. In other words, something beautiful or good is just relative to the experience of individual people, and does not conform to some higher or supernatural definition of good.

Now interestingly this actually agrees with a main point from the book of Ecclesiastes, namely that everything under the sun is meaningless or vanity. Buddhist, like atheist,like all of us have to deal with how to live at peace in our world, but they have limited their view of the world to "under the sun" or just to the natural world. Christians on the other hand, have resources to look for outside just the physical world, which is where the author of Ecclesiastes finally leads his readers too. We internally feel the need to worship or extol the goodness of good things, but when we try to find their ultimate reason inside the universe, we cannot find it. Therefore, it seems that we desire something that can only be explained by something outside the universe. C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

The solution then for the desires is to look beyond this world. The good things in this world have their origin and meaning outside this world in the very nature of God. Christians then do not need to deny reality and their own innate knowledge of goodness, rather we need to acknowledge its source. When we do we see that the goodness of creation leads of beyond creation. When we see that baby or mountain, or hear the beauty of a melody and harmony, or experience the look of love in your spouses eyes, we know that they are expressions of God's goodness. Our hearts turn to worship, not the creation, but the creator. And since His goodness and beauty are infinite, we will never in all of eternity grow weary of His goodness, like we often do of earthly pleasures. He grounds our desires in something, no someone, real, and the way to true peace and contentment is not to deny our desires, but to turn them toward God in worship.

I am find myself worshiping more and more as see the frailness of our world, and as I see my own need for fulfillment can only be met in Him. I not only worship by turning on music, but when I am biking and feel the muscles of my body being used or see the sunset, or when I look in the eyes of my wife and give her a kiss, or when I listen to my daughter ask a great question, or I hear my son's excitement about his first day of work. In any number of ways throughout my day, God reminds me of His goodness, and my heart turns to Him in thanks and adoration. I cannot image that the emptiness of Buddhist meditation can possibly bring the type of rich fulfillment that worship of the one true God and His son, Jesus Christ brings.

Multiverse, Aliens, but no God?

The following is a quote from Neil Shenvi's book, Why I Believe,

Yet, no matter how counterintuitive, shocking and bizarre the constructs of modern physics become, many in our culture continue to insist that whatever it portrays is "ordinary" while the supernatural is "extraordinary." We balk at the existence of immaterial realities but seem seriously unconcerned with the proliferation of ten-dimensional strings, parallel universes, closed-time loops, and nonlocal entanglement. You can even see this inconsistency in our science fiction, where magical plot devices are barely concealed by a thin patina of scientific jargon. The presence of actual angels or ghosts in Star Trek would be exceptionally jarring. But if the captain announces that a "hyperdimensional tachyon-based life-form has materialized on the bridge," we can suspend our disbelief. Why the disconnect?

 As a Sci-fi fan, I have had this same thought a number of times, while watching Star Trek, Stargate, or Fringe. Why are scientific-minded people willing to believe in the possibility of aliens & multiverses but not even consider the possibility of God?

I have theorized at least these two reasons for this skepticism. First, like Neil says, the God explanation sounds like magic or an appeal to an illogical "faith," whereas the other sounds scientific and they desire to think themselves logical and/or grounded in "reality" by which them mean physical things that they can feel and explain. Of course, the problem highlighted in these shows is that there are many areas of life that are not strictly physical and for which we do not yet have any good explanations, such as morality, origins or destiny. Thus the writers often propose sciency-sounding explanations that are far-fetched or that appeal to some long-forgotten or distant alien culture that knows more than us. I believe that for many scientifically minded people a possible naturalistic explanation, no matter how unlikely, is still better than proposing God might be involved because they believe that God is like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, namely a being that can do anything necessary to fill whatever gaps we have in our understanding. Having "faith" in this kind of God is indeed like magic with no need for evidence, and unfortunately, some Christians behave as if God does desire us to have this kind of faith in Him.

Christians should counter this by explaining that God as described in the Bible is not illogical, nor does He demand faith without evidence. In fact, even in Hebrews 11:1 where faith is described as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," it is still not a faith based on no evidence. In fact, in each of the stories described in Hebrews 11, the individuals had evidence of God's existence and plan, but they still needed to trust Him for the future. All over the Bible, God encourages people to examine the evidence for the truth of who He is and even to compare Him to other gods to see that He is real. He points to the order of the universe as evidence for Himself. Many early Christian scientists believed in the order of the universe because they believed in a God of order who had created with a purpose. The writers of the Bible do understand that humans are limited and do not fully understand the spiritual realm, but they never describe it as chaos or a magical place without rules. Rather it is a place where we do not have access to all the information yet.

But should we fail to believe in something just because we cannot fully understand it yet? Why should a spiritual realm where there exist creatures with purpose and will, not at least be one of the options for helping to explain phenomenon here? I do not assume subatomic forces do not exist or are disordered just because I cannot explain them. Likewise, I do not assume God is capricious or random, just because I cannot yet explain all of His actions. 

Therefore, as Christians, I think we can and should undertake to help skeptics see their inconsistent thinking when they propose theories like aliens or multiverses which have no evidence and really do not have any explanatory power, and at the same time reject even the possibility of a supernatural realm. We can do this by reframing the biblical understanding of supernatural realm from a magical mystical place with no rules, to one which is like another dimension where there are rules, but ones that we cannot access yet.

Unfortunately, even if we could help skeptics reframe their understanding of the supernatural, many would likely still reject God as a possible explanation for anything, because of a second reason which is spiritual and psychological. If God exists, then He not only created the universe with order and purpose, but it also means He created humans with order and purpose. Therefore, if we really wanted to understand ourselves and how we should function in the world, we might have to figure out if God has told us anything about that. In other words, God's existence might impact our existence and how we live our lives. To live our best lives, we might have to learn from and obey someone other than ourselves. Often, people are either afraid of a bad authority, or they simply do not want anyone to be an authority over them. Very few skeptics are likely to admit this kind of psychological prejudice, but often in conversation, I have heard experienced a level of anger at God that seems completely unjustified if the skeptic really did not believe He existed. What about the possibility of God's existence would cause them to be so emotional toward Him or toward believers in God if they did not have some much more personal reasons to doubt His existence. 

The most vocal critics of any belief system are those who have been hurt within that system, and if you hear the personal stories of many skeptics, you will hear many such stories. I am not suggesting that person hurt is the only reason for disbelief, any more than the only rationale for believing is psychological benefit, but it is clear that personal experiences play a large role in determining what we explanations we might accept as possible. 

In conversations with skeptics, Christians can help overcome this barrier in two ways. First, to be transparent about our own biases. If personal experience, such as dreams or some fantastic worship time, is one of the reasons we believe, we need to admit that. If God is real, than having such an experience should not be discounted, but that sort of evidence is not transferable to others, so we should be willing to also have and be willing to discuss other reasons to believe, which is exactly what Shenvi is doing in his book. If we can admit our biases and bring more neutral evidence, we can perhaps help the skeptic to be willing to examine their personal biases and how those might influence their conclusions. 

Knowing these reasons or any others for why someone might not consider believing in God will not necessarily overcome someone's disbelief, but they might help us further the conversation. If we think of sharing our beliefs with someone as gardening or farming, which is a metaphor the Bible uses, then we might simply be tilling the soil making it possible for someone to later on consider believing in Jesus. Ultimately God uses many different means to draw people to Himself, and the more we learn about the world, ourselves, and other people will help us to be available to be one of the tools God uses in the lives of others.

Loving Intent versus Loving Outcomes.

As a pastor, I often get to participate with our associate pastor, Cory Martin, in deciding how to help people who come with a specific financial or physical need. They often make a compelling case for why they need help with rent or utilities, and I am glad to be able to help them when we have the resources to do that. Our church takes an offering once a month to help in this ministry, and I know that other churches do as well. There is certainly a biblical command to help those with less.(see Proverbs 19:17, Luke 14:12-14 among many others).

But as we help we also have to be careful that our help does not end up with bad results in the lives of people who we intend to be actually helping. Just because your intention is to do good for someone doesn't mean the result is good for them. This holds true in any number of areas of life, where people have desires that they want to be fulfilled, and they think need to be fulfilled, such as drug addiction, eating disorders, sexual desires and all kinds of co-dependencies. We sometimes want to help, but if we're not wise we end up hurting the person instead. 

This example of a time when people with the intention of helping ended up hurting someone is what inspired me to write this post. 

 Often times people get themselves into problems because they're following their desires which have led them astray.  If we affirm them by simply giving them more money without helping them understand how to use it properly, or affirm them by telling them that their desires are OK even when we can see those desires are in conflict with reality that will never be changed, we end up hurting them in the long run. In this article, we see how empathy for a person's problems can sometimes be a sin instead of a help.

 A wiser and more loving response would be to examine the long-term outcomes of certain behaviors, or studying what has worked historically and the wisdom of the ages. Then when we go to help someone, our intentions are more likely to line up with actual good and loving outcomes. 

This response takes more time and effort and frequently it also means we have to get more personally involved with someone, which can be scary because unhealthy people frequently wound those around them. We need to stay close to the Lord in the process and have our primary motive be love for and obedience to Him rather than expecting results from the other person who may or may not show appropriate gratefulness. 

God does call us to reach out and help all kinds of hurting people, those poor in physical resources and poor in spirit, such as those who might be emotionally distressed, but He also calls us to be wise. I want to encourage you to be willing to go deep with people that you desire to help, so you are not just meeting their immediate need, but rather are able to be wise and see what their deeper needs might be. This will give you insight into how you can help them in a way that is truly loving by helping without leading to further negative consequences in their lives.

If you are interested in studying this more, I recommend the book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.

How I Read the Bible

 

One of my regular disciplines over the last 20 or more years has been to be constantly reading through the whole Bible. I take a whole Bible reading plan of some sort (here is a link for a number of different ones), and just start reading. I have only once in my life read through the whole Bible in a year, but I just keep plugging away and generally read several chapters a day.

I miss some days, but on the whole I have become more and more disciplined so that I read more days than I miss. Furthermore, I also try to highlight passages that are meaningful to me personally and sometimes I copy and paste them into a note along with some of my reflections about the passage. If my reflections get longer they end up being a blog post here. 

Generally, it takes me anywhere from 2-3 years to get through the whole Bible and then I start again. I also like to read different versions to get a different flavor and perhaps see things in a new way, but I have repeated some of my favorite versions (ESV, HCSB, NLT). Right now at the end of 2022, I am just finishing up the book of Revelation and the last of the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. This time through I have been reading through a "Readers" Bible that did not include verse numbers, and I have also tried to read through whole books instead of chapters at a time. This has helped me to see the flow of specific books and themes throughout books. 

I like reading plans that include some of the Old Testament and some of the New Testament, so I have alternated books this time around. When I do this I often see connected themes that run throughout the Bible, especially how the NT authors use OT ideas. Christianity really is a continuation and completion of the revelation given to the Jewish people. 

If you are a long-time Christian who reads other things or went through college, you really can read the whole Bible, but you may have to take it in smaller chunks and build up your reading muscles, especially as you hit some of the less thrilling parts. I know the habit has taken me a while and I still continue to build it and enjoy it more and more. I find great wisdom and joy in reading God's Word.

For those who may find it hard to read the whole Bible, I want to recommend a new plan that I just found and the I am going to try myself over the next year. 

A Bible scholar named Greg Lanier has put together this redemptive history reading plan which focuses on 13 big Bible themes and pairs Old Testament passages with New Testament passage around those themes. It is only about 200 chapters, so not the whole Bible, but it should give the reader a great overview of the big themes of scripture. If you are just starting out and trying to figure out what to read, I want to challenge you to read along with me this next year. I will try to read a chapter a day, first from the Old Testament and then the New Testament. 

I would bet if you learn to regularly read the Bible, that you will grow in wisdom and knowledge of God, the world, and yourself. Furthermore, there is almost no downside. May you be blessed this today and this year!!

God's Part, Our Part, Their Part

Ezekiel 33:7-11 “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.

“And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: ‘Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?’ Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?"

God wants to save and Ezekiel is responsible for declaring the message God gave him, but he is not responsible for how the people react to the message. There is God's part, our part, and their part. As much as we might desire to change someone else, we can only do so much. Once we have fulfilled our God given role in someone's life, we have to leave the results in God's hands. Likewise, ultimately our lives before God are not someone else's responsibility. When we hear the word of God, we need to obey regardless of what other people did or did not do.