Theolatte
Nothing goes better with a steaming latte than an engaging discussion about theology and philosophy. Sit down with your favorite caffeinated beverage and peruse the thoughts of a pseudo-intellectual.
Et Cetera
Punctuated Intervention
June 28th, 2010
Why do bad things happen to good people?
This is a perennial philosophical question that requires answers from every person in every generation. It is often answered with hollow rhetoric from isolated and insulated academicians. There is little comfort in religious jargon when one encounters personal loss and grief. Like a toothache, there are few options for true relief. That’s why my friend Mike Calhoun’s book is an honest and helpful resource for following Christ in a fallen world: Where Was God When.
I’m honored to be a part of the “blog tour” related to the theme of this book. Here are a few thoughts of my own about the topic of why bad things happen to good people:
RULING
Let’s begin by acknowledging the fact that God rules sovereignly over the universe. It is his creation and there is nothing outside of his purview. As Creator, God is clearly all powerful and thus entirely able to cause or prevent anything He desires.
LOVING
God has revealed himself as loving in the narrative of Scripture. The Apostle John says it powerfully, “God is love.” The fact that God is sovereign and that he has revealed himself as loving create a perceived dilemma for many people. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, how can he allow evil? This leads us to a very brief analysis of the human condition.
UNRAVELING
The first two chapters of Genesis provide complementary accounts of the creation of the world. The third chapter shocks us with man’s rebellion against the Creator. Thus, the Garden of Eden spans a mere eighty verses in the Bible. An earthly utopia seems to have been a brief experience. Anyone longing for an existence free from troubles must either seek to go back to the garden or to have God’s Kingdom established on earth. Christ has promised to do the latter.
The three chapters of Genesis reveal that man’s sin has brought about the curse of physical death, spiritual disharmony, relational strife and environmental turmoil. God has promised redemption for the cursed earth that is unraveling to the cadence of God’s providence and for the purpose of his glory. It is in the wait for this redemption that our hearts are tempted to doubt God’s promises.
STUMBLING
Humanity seeks to navigate the increasingly chaotic landscape with a broken moral compass. The free decisions of a confused populace coupled with the natural disasters prone to a cursed cosmos make for a dangerous world. The people and the planet are longing for an existence free from perils and filled with pleasure. It is what we were created for. This leads us back to God.
LONGING
God has created us for himself. In him alone can we find safety and satisfaction. In this world we can know neither fully. We can taste and know that God is good, yet we still live in a fallen world and we long for more of him. When a person places their faith in Christ, God removes their sin guilt. However, he does not remove them from their sin prone flesh or immediately transport them out of a sin saturated society.
They will suffer from both. They will hurt. They will cry. They will long for more. They will long for God’s Kingdom to be established on earth as it is in Heaven. Their longing will one day be realized.
INTERVENING
The true danger for the heart of every believer is keep a biblical perspective of God in the midst of suffering. If we are not careful we will begin to think that God operates through a method of punctuated intervention. He chooses to intervene here or there, but he essential functions like the Deistic God of Thomas Jefferson. This is not the God of the Bible.
He is always active. He is always present. He is ever sovereign. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He sees the end from the beginning. In a way too high for us to understand, our temporary sufferings are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed for those who love Christ. This can be a hard pill to swallow in the midst of suffering, but it is the promise of God’s future plans for believers.
The cursed world will continue to unravel until the time of his promised return. Until that day we can find comfort in knowing Christ and believing he will one day right all wrongs. Bad things happen to all people, believers and unbelievers alike. Disasters result from human inventions and natural calamities. Both result from the fall. Christ alone is the hope for hurting people. While we may observe grief, all who long for his return will be surprised by joy.
Until then we will laugh and weep, but most of all we will long. May your heart be encouraged as you await for the return of the redeemer. Maranatha.
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If you enjoyed this post you might like my blog book “Rotten in Denmark“
On Being Human
June 22nd, 2010
The following is a poem by C.S. Lewis contrasting the experiences of angels and humans. Enjoy.
ON BEING HUMAN
By C.S. Lewis
Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying,
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear,
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal
Huge Principles appear.
The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of
Arboreal life, how from earth’s salty lap
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness
Enacted by leaves’ fall and rising sap;
But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance
Of sun from shadow where the trees begin,
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us
-An angel has no skin.
They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang –can angels measure it?
An angel has no nose.
The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries.
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf’s billowy curves,
Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.
Far richer they! I know the senses’ witchery
Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see;
Imminent death to man that barb’d sublimity
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be.
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior,
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours, not theirs.
Right Brain Theology
June 16th, 2010
You have selective hearing. At least that is what my mother told me as a child. Apparently this is an epidemic that afflicts a large percentage of the population. People often don’t hear what we tell them, or at least they don’t hear what we intend for them to hear.
Over the last few days I have found myself thinking a lot about the way people hear and process the gospel. I noticed a pattern as I worked through defining general categories through which people respond to information. This is far from scholarly research, but it is grounded in personal observation. The categories quickly began to fit into right brain vs. left brain domains.
People respond and resonate with information differently. I think the following contrasting categories illustrate this point:
SIMPLE – COMPLEX
ABSTRACT – CONCRETE
NARRATIVE – PROPOSITIONAL
I think that left brain thinkers resonate more with presentations that are complex, concrete and propositional. On the other hand, right brainers are more responsive to presentations that are simple, abstract and narrative.
This is a concept I plan on working out more in the future, but thought I would give you a glimpse into my right brained thinking process. More to come.
Praying for Prodigals
June 7th, 2010
Never underestimate the providence and power of God in pursuing and persuading prodigals. Don’t stop praying. Don’t stop loving. Don’t stop reaching out. God never quits.
If you are praying for a friend or family member who has walked away from the Christian faith here are a few points of encouragement:
1.) God loves prodigals.
In Jesus’ lost stories in Luke 15 he features God’s unending love. Jesus builds the emphasis and priority of his message with his final story of the prodigal son. While lost coins and lost sheep are of importance, they pale in comparison to the value of a lost son. God loves your prodigal more than you do. Keep praying. Keep trusting God. Don’t give up. Don’t lose heart.
2.) God pursues prodigals.
Your family member or friend cannot outrun God. His ear is not deaf. His eye is not blind. His arm is not too short to save. There is no where on earth that a prodigal can hide from God.
3.) God delights in saving prodigals.
God is so gracious and so loving that he finds joy in saving those who seem the least likely to ever respond. Even in the midst of a prodigal’s fury towards God, they cannot resist the Spirit of God who is able to penetrate hearts and minds. The gospel is the power of God. What is the strength of man compared to the power of the gospel?
A prodigal prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father,
You sought me when I was a prodigal. I was unworthy of your love and acceptance. Through Christ I now belong. Through Christ I am now accepted. I pray for the prodigal in my life that you would open their eyes to the truthfulness of the gospel. May the power of the gospel be made evident to them in tangible ways.
As I have trusted you with my very soul, so I entrust my prodigal to your care.
Please prepare me and others for a grace-filled and love-motivated ministry to the prodigal I care so much about.
‘Almighty God, you have made them for yourself, and their hearts will be restless till they find their rest in you; so lead them by your Spirit that in this life they might live to your glory, and in their life to come enjoy you for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.’
Amen.
Amen.
(The last paragraph of the prayer is based on a quote from St. Augustine)
Two Curses and a Blessing
June 6th, 2010
Two Curses and a Blessing
(a pastoral commentary on Galatians 3:10-14)
“You are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t,” so the saying goes. In the early to mid nineteenth century a young preacher by the name of Lorenzo Dow used this expression in reference to those who perverted the message of the Bible.
Paul uses a similar rhetorical device in Galatians 3:10-14. He speaks of two curses. In quoting the Old Testament he states that anyone who does not keep the Law is under a curse. Such disobedience is punishable by death on a cross, which is also referred to as a curse, “cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.”
The first curse deals with disobedience, and the second curse deals with judgment. Because of our disobedience (first curse) we are deserving of judgment (second curse).
So check this out:
As sons of Adam and Eve, we are under the curse that comes from disobedience.
Despite the best of human efforts, we cannot completely obey the Law.
Because we are guilty of the first curse we deserve the second curse (judgment).
On the other hand:
Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience and was not under the first curse of disobedience.
Jesus did not deserve judgment (the second curse) because he was not under the first curse.
However, Paul states, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us.”
So, let’s follow the logic:
We are under the first curse, and thus deserve the second.
He was innocent of the first curse, but willingly endured the second.
Because he was not under the first curse, he could stand as a substitute for those deserving the second curse.
All who are guilty of the first curse can find freedom from the second curse through faith in Christ.
He became a curse for us so that we might be forgiven and made free.
“He made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
In these two curses we find the blessing of God available through Christ.
I look forward to talking about this more at the campus church on Thursday. Join us in person at the Old Louisville Coffee House or online.
(see blog post “Social Graces” to see how you can stream our Thursday worship service)