Engelines

Taking your meds?

2011-12-01T19:31:00.001-05:00

Anti-rejection drugs are daily medications taken by organ transplant patients to prevent organ rejection. Such drugs, also called immunosuppressants, help to suppress the immune system's response to a new organ. When a new organ is placed inside a patient's body, the patient's immune system recognizes the organ as foreign tissue and tries to reject it.

A similar thing happens when God puts a 'new heart' in us by '... the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior' (Titus 3.5-6). For the rest of our earthly lives, our sinful nature will try to expel the 'new nature' that God has given us from our souls. We need to take 'anti-rejection medication', so to speak. That would be what Christians call the 'Means of Grace' - God's word and sacraments.

These are powerful spiritual agents that remain outside of us and useless to us unless taken religiously (if you pardon the pun). Those who think they can remain Christians, yet not receive the saving benefits of the Means of Grace are like transplant patients who refuse to take their anti-rejection meds. They need to ‘repent’of not taking their meds, if you see what I mean. Otherwise there is a real danger that theywill eventually become spiritually ill and reject the Spirit of God and the newlife that was given to them to provide eternal life.

Nowthey did not have organ transplants and immunosuppressant drugs back in NewTestament times. But they did have toeat. And so Jesus used the urgency ofnutrition to make His point.

‘here is the bread that comesdown from heaven, which a man may eat and not die (Jesus said). ⁵¹Iam the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life ofthe world."

⁵²Then the Jews began to arguesharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh toeat?"

⁵³Jesus said to them, "I tellyou the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,you have no life in you.

⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinksmy blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

⁵⁵For my flesh is real food and myblood is real drink.

⁵⁶Whoever eats my flesh and drinksmy blood remains in me, and I in him’ (John 6.50-56).

Do you see how that phrase ‘remains in me and I in him’ resembles organrejection? Without the transplantpatient eating the anti-rejection drugs, a vital organ transplanted into a bodymay not remain in the body – and the results would be death. Youcan see the urgency in taking those meds.

Thetone John took in his preaching was that of urgency also as he shouted, "Repent!For the Kingdom of God is near" to his audience. This same Kingdom of God, new life and theHoly Spirit came upon each of us when we were at the font, becoming baptized inthe Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was there that the HolySpirit entered into our hearts, creating within us saving faith in JesusChrist, who died and rose again to purchase that new life for us with Hisblood.

The baptism of John the Baptiser differed from the baptism of Jesus in thatJohn's baptism brought the newly baptized to look forward to the Messiah whowas to come and bring about total forgiveness by what He would lateraccomplish.

Bycontrast, the baptism of Jesus, that which we have received, has brought ustotal forgiveness on account of what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

Usinga phrase that was later taken up into the Divine Service, St. John the Baptiserproclaimed about Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away thesin of the world! (Jn. 1:29-31).

Inthe Divine Service that is what we proclaim because it is Jesus Christwho takes away our sin by the power of His forgiving touch. Abide in Him and He with you. ‘Walk in thelight, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and theblood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’ (1 John 1.7) And theSpirit of Jesus Christ Who has caused us to repent, will raise us up again. Amen.

'To him whois able to keep you from falling and to present you before his gloriouspresence without fault and with great joy-- to the only God our Savior beglory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before allages, now and forevermore! Amen.

What Gets Your Juices Going as a Christian?

2011-10-31T21:21:00.004-04:00

All my life as a Christian I have been caught between the cross-fire in the war against ‘subjectivity’ in spiritual things. Luther railed against the ‘schwermer’ (the fanatics) and Lutheran churches ever since have been scenes of conflict between those whose goal it is to protect orthodoxy from emotion and those who are addicted to the ‘high’ they get from emotion in their spirituality.

So what are we to make of the ongoing attraction of pleasure as a feature of Christian worship? Is it always ‘wrong’ to enjoy devotional experiences? Is the current interest in ‘spirituality’ today just another sign of contemporary hedonism – transferred into our religious experiences?

As Christians we do not subscribe to the dreadful anthropological theory that human beings are mere animals whose thoughts and emotions are nothing more than the result of electrochemical processes in their brains. We are not materialists. Having said that, we recognize that we are spiritual beings with material bodies, whose thoughts and emotions are influenced by neurotransmitters and other electrochemical agents in ways similar to that of all conscious living things. We accept the fact that our souls are hosted by and in some ways limited by our bodies in a fallen world.

Part of the reality of the religious scene in general and the realm of spirituality in particular is the routine stimulation and manipulation of the brain by practitioners to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Such exercising of the brain in religion encompasses a broad range, from the academic-sounding cerebral use of complex rationalistic concepts to the decomposed ‘language’ of glossolalia and everything in between.

Leaving aside the manipulation of the brain by mind-altering substances, legal and illegal, found in some religions, an altered state of consciousness can be achieved by means of words. Language is one of the most potent brain stimulants in religion. Language is a divine gift – a miracle to which we have become so accustomed that we take it for granted and often abuse it.

Neurobiologists tell us that the area of the human brain that processes language is located right next to the area of the brain that processes transcendent and religious concepts. Synaptic connections being what they are, language and spiritual thoughts overlap and we find words to be very evocative and spiritually charged.

The use of language to achieve an altered state of consciousness is, of course, not just a religious phenomenon. It is used by everyone from child-minders to horse-whisperers to calm and focus minds. Lovers use ‘pillow talk’ and lovey-dovey language to generate feelings of intimacy as mind-altering as those generated through sexual activity. As they say, the most important sexual organ is the brain.

The use of language among lovers has much in common with the use of language in spirituality. The common denominator and ‘bottom line’ is pleasure – specifically the pleasure associated with intimacy. ‘Sacred pleasure’, if it can be achieved, is a kind of ‘holy grail’ for spirituality. Religious practitioners quite understandably long for religious exercises that are as pleasurable as they are obligatory. If we must resist the pull of gravity (that is ‘the law of sin that wars within our members’ (Rom. 7) in order to soar into a meaningful heavenly conversation with God, wouldn’t it help if we could ‘get our jollies’ at the same time? What if Christian devotional exercises could be, on some level, genuinely pleasurable?
Having crudely described the holy grail of spirituality, it is hard to identify very much else that can be said to be held in common among the myriad seekers of pleasurable intimacy with God. What one does find are schools of spirituality that seek to guide individual believers into common experiences of intimacy with God.

Such schools of spirituality are by no means conducive to unity among believers (This is a real understatement!) Splits between believers have often been caused by clashes between them over ‘what gets your juices going’ spiritually. Some clash over whether pleasurable intimacy with God is even right or valid. ‘If it feels good, it can’t be right’, they reason.

Often such splits are defined by their doctrinal disagreements even though some ‘doctrines’, such as the ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ or ‘devotion to the sacred heart of Mary’ are less dogmatic than they are experiential. Speaking in tongues and endless repetitions of the Ave Maria, despite the diversity of their denominational origins, have much in common with each other. Both are among many manifestations of the use of experiences and mysticism to stimulate and manipulate the human brain to achieve a pleasurable altered state of consciousness. They are examples of devices employed in the up-hill effort to enjoy an intimate relationship with God.

Perhaps aware that the word ‘spirituality’ attracts book sales, recent Lutheran authors flirt with a kind of ‘bait and switch’ game claiming to describe spirituality but ending up discussing how Lutheran appreciation of objective doctrines rescues Lutherans from the perils of subjectivity.
Consigning the experiences properly associated with spirituality to the realm of dubious subjectivism and fleshly pleasures, these Lutherans fail to do justice to the way that even Lutherans are wired neurologically as human beings. Is the best we Lutherans can do to arrive at an almost Buddhist renunciation of all fleshly experiences in our efforts to cultivate an orthodox spirituality? Offering a ‘spirituality’ like this, without subjective experiences, is like offering a feast without food.

Part of the reason for Lutheran suspicion and disdain for experiential spirituality is that feeling a pleasurable intimacy with a god is not exclusively Christian. Yet, since when do Christians deplore using their brains, just because non-Christians use theirs? Just because we are all using the same ‘wiring’, does that mean it is uncertain or unlikely that the true God is involved in such use of our brains? After all, the true and only God is the one who has given us our brains in the first place.
No human brain is intrinsically Christian. If non-Christian brains have experiences associated with false gods that does not mean that such experiences are un-available to the true God. If anything, the opposite is true. Spiritual experiences available with the True God should make the subjective experiences with the false god’s feel like cheap fakes by comparison!

Recent efforts to elaborate upon ‘Lutheran Spirituality’ have failed to address these issues. I suspect that, in our zeal to avoid subjectivism tainted with sinful flesh we are underestimating what God can and is willing to do. And in rejecting intimate experiences with God as a priori dubious and heretical, we are letting our doubts get the best of us, and cheating ourselves out of a much more pleasurable spirituality than we feel is available or legitimate.

We excuse ourselves by insisting that we do not doubt God – we doubt man; we doubt ourselves. So we have not because we ask not. We find not because we seek not. And where is this emotionless, dispassionate piety exemplified in God’s Word? Nowhere. Emotionally dead orthodoxy is probably a remnant of enlightenment rationalism disguised as good Lutheranism, rather than genuine Christianity.
But, we argue, only experiences that are from God, like the Means of Grace, like the dominical Sacraments, are valid experiences for spirituality. This sounds reasonable: if the experience is ‘from God’ it’s legit; if it’s of human origin its not. But is that what we find in real life? Is this even what we find in Scripture? Or is spirituality more nuanced, less clearly defined, more of a mysterious mix of the divine and human?

Did God give us such enormously complex brains so that we could only interact with a few sacraments intended for the forgiveness of sins?

What do we find in Holy Scripture? The Bible exposes us to all kinds of ecstatic spirituality that we are taught today to dismiss as limited to biblical times. St. Paul says, ‘I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also’, and we have no clue what he is on about. He says, ‘I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you’, and we exclude his experiences from consideration because he was an apostle. We read his apostolic direction, ‘do not forbid speaking in tongues’, but we have seen congregations torn apart by that practice. (1 Corinthians 14.15,18 & 39).

We are also pretty hypocritical on this score, as well. I say that because many a believer, denouncing the smell of incense, will actively promote the sound of their favourite inspirational artist. And many, turning up their noses at the sound of ‘Casting Crowns’, will get misty-eyed at the sound of a Mozart or Schubert Mass, sung by a choir. We all have different stuff that gets our juices going as Christians, so why disparage others? As we read in Romans: 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's’ (Romans 14.4-8)
Maybe the problem with spirituality is that it belongs in that growing catalogue of things about which it has to be said that ‘people ruined it’.

Nevertheless there is something to be said for re-habilitating the concept of spirituality in our circles. I only appeal to us to do justice to the subject. Let’s really pursue and expect pleasurable intimacy with God and heavenly things – each one of us ‘being fully convinced in his own mind’, as the Bible says.

Revisionist History Channel and Jesus

2011-08-09T10:37:00.003-04:00

BEWARE of a phone call from the History Channel offering you a free 30 day preview of their DVDs as a ministry resource! Unless you are 'Church of Satan', you will find the History Channel hacks have nothing edifying to offer with their biased anti-Christian 'documentaries' about our Lord Jesus Christ. The following were some of my reactions:

Judas, Betrayer or Friend?’ has a polished appearance and loaded with scripture, but all the ‘scholars’ undermine the Gospels and viewers are taught that the Gospels can be wrong and biased about Judas. The holocaust is held up by the end of the show as the result of Christian tradition that Judas was the only ‘Jew’ among the apostles, a thief, greedy and whose name sounded like ‘Jewish’ in German: ‘Jude’. The show finishes with a clear depiction of Christ’s death as redemptive, but the damage had already been done rendering this show likewise unsuitable for Christian audiences. It contained some very obvious examples of exploitation of the audiences ignorance of the Bible. One ‘scholar’ announces that Jesus never calls Judas ‘betrayer’ or ‘traitor’, but only friend. Yet those who are not biblically illiterate will know that Jesus does say of his betrayer ‘one of you is a devil’. Is ‘devil’ another way of Jesus calling Judas ‘friend’? Or the Greek language is invoked to undermine the English word, ‘betray’. It literally means, ‘hand over’, little more malign that making an appointment. Yet what about the Bible quoting Jesus asking Judas, ‘do you betray the son of man with a kiss?’? It is the same Greek word. Is Jesus simply asking, ‘do you make an appointment for the son of man with a kiss?’? The show was counting on people being ignorant of the scriptures and then exploiting that ignorance. That sounds pretty diabolical, don’t you think?

‘Paul’, another show dominated by attempts to make St. Paul interesting by making sensational, often inaccurate claims, such as exaggerating the difference between his theology and that of St. Peter and the original apostles. Prominent among the liberals interviewed is Dr. John Gager, ‘re-defining Paul’. I almost switched it off after the narrator claimed the Gospel in St. Paul’s teachings shows him to be ‘the master of spin’ (!). I concluded I could not use this in my parish. Would I really want to have people taught by a DVD that St. Paul’s zeal was driven mainly by his conclusion that the end of the world must be imminent because the resurrection of Jesus showed that the dead were already starting to rise, reasoning he never articulated in any of his writings? Dr. Pamela Eisenbaum, a Jewish feminist, teaching at a liberal Christian seminary, says, I don’t know that Paul ever made it to Rome. I think that might have died in Jerusalem…’ Since human opinions are on centre stage, I might as well say what I think. And my question is, ‘why focus on what the revisionists are saying; are sensational new claims that make good television, the only things viewers should hear?’’

‘The Execution of Jesus’ is from the History Channel’s ‘Mysteries of the Bible series’. Although nicely narrated by the English actress Jean Simmons, very soon into the show viewers were subjected to the cynical materialistically biased prating of Jesus Seminar founder, John Dominic Crossan who announces that Jesus never called himself divine. ‘Since when?’ Well - since the ‘Jesus Seminar’ becomes the real star of the ‘Act I’, that begins with the alarmist observation that the gospels were written after Jesus’ earthly lifetime, ergo we have absolutely no written eyewitness testimony (!). Act II is about holy week, ruined by Crossan’s stupid doubts that Lazarus was really raised. Acts III & IV is about the triduum, ruined by narrative saying, ‘…scholars attempt to separate poetic license taken by the gospel writers from the actual events of the day’ and more of Crossan’s doubts (repeated from an earlier segment) and his own admission that, if it was not for the cleansing of the temple, Crossan has no idea why Jesus’ execution was sought. Act V is wholly devoted to the resurrection, ruined by more ‘scholars’ trying to explain it away as psychosis or myth. Would I inflict this on members of my parish? Far from it.

The Last Supper was the subject of a DVD from the History Channel devoted to ‘the holiest meal in the history of Christianity’. With the biblical narrative read by the late Jean Simmons, there is mercifully less of the Jesus Seminar hacks, but Crossan still pops up routinely as ‘scholars struggle to re-construct (read destruct) what actually happened’. Never is there the slightest hint that anyone regarded the bread and wine as anything but symbolic. For this reason alone, I would never contaminate my parishioners minds with this program.

With ‘Mary of Nazareth’ we get a program that is far more reverent in its depiction than any of those dealing with Jesus. Yet it is a program with inexplicable omissions: Lots of references to angels are made (including the non-biblical immaculate conception); why not mention that angels guided the shepherds to the stable to visit the newborn Jesus? How else did the shepherds know to go there? Other omissions are even more strange. Why omit the child Jesus in the Temple narrative? This had to be bad editing, with this important part of the story ending up on the cutting room floor or something. On the plus side there are comments from Dr. Paul Maier several times. But still, I would not waste the money on this DVD or the time to show it to my parishioners.

‘James, Brother of Jesus’ was a good documentary on the ossuary that may both prove in stone the existence of James, Jesus and his step-father, Joseph.

The 'Apostles Collection – 2 DVD set' was harmless and quite good. Perhaps, at some point in the future, I may obtain a copy, but not now.

After viewing all the DVDs sent to me by History Education, It did not take me 30 days to conclude that they are quite unsatisfactory for my pastoral use. I will NOT tolerate the Holy Scriptures being assaulted in this way, as I am sure no other religions would tolerate such disrespectful treatment of their holy books.

Passionate about the Passion of Christ

2011-04-22T14:30:00.003-04:00

The Latin variations on their word for suffering: 'passus', 'passio' and so forth, are the origin of our word 'passion'. It is from the word 'suffering' that we get the word 'passion'. But in modern English we don't tend to mean pain when we use the word passion. If you tell me baking cookies is your passion, you are not saying you find cooking a pain. Likewise if I hear that she loves him with a passion, I don't understand by that that she finds him to be a pain.

So language changes. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, for the purposes of preaching the Gospel, I'm glad that 'passion' doesn't mean 'pain and suffering' to us today! Because it is the modern understanding of the word 'passion' – an intense and all pervasive driving force of love - that best describes the impulse behind God's Son dying on a cross for the sin of the world!

For, if we focus on the original meaning of the word passion, as in 'Ooo doesn't crucifixion really hurt', then what are we doing? Or, if we emphasize what a terrible thing it was to cause Jesus so much suffering; again – where are we going with this? You see, there is a right way and a wrong way to meditate on the passion and sufferings of Jesus Christ.

This is why we are not here this evening to express outrage at the way those Jews or those Romans mistreated Jesus. We know God is not impressed when we congratulate ourselves that we are not as evil as 'those people'.

Nor are we here to merely sympathize with Jesus, like the women who wept for Him as he staggered by them carrying His cross. You may recall that Jesus actually said to those women, 'weep not for me' (Luke 23.27). His view on that has not changed.

All the wrong ways to meditate on the passion of Christ have one thing in common: they aim to achieve God's favour and earn His approval. Such meditation has the opposite effect of what God intends!

God wants us to take away from the passion of the Christ one message only and that is that none of us could earn God's approval nor make up for our own sins and failures necessitating God's Son's coming into the world – to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He had to save us from our sins or else we would be lost to God forever. That is the precise message of the passion of the Christ.

During this 2011 Lenten Season, we have been turning our attention to the miracles of Lent. I would suggest to you that the sacrifice of Christ by which He redeemed sinners like you and me is the great miracle of Good Friday.

Webster’s dictionary defines the word miracle as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention.” It seems most appropriate to describe as a miracle the intervention to save humanity that the atoning death of God's Son is. It is most extraordinary that God would do this and the most wondrous example of divine intervention there is.

St. Peter wrote: “Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”

The salvation of the human race is truly God's passion – an intense and all pervasive driving force of love. When Christ was hanging on that horrible cross, He was thinking not of Himself but rather of you, me, and the whole world.

And it was truly 'passion' – in the modern sense, meaning love – that was the impulse behind His saving us and the plan to do so from the very creation of our world.

Scripture abounds with the use of this word 'love' to describe the accomplishment of God's work of redeeming the world through Christ' crucified:
• In Galatians 2:20, we read, “Christ . . . loved me and gave Himself for me.”
• In Ephesians 5:2, we read, “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
• In Ephesians 5:25, we read, “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

Jesus Christ, out of passionate love for us, accepted the full punishment for our sins and the sin of the whole world, as I said in my opening text:
“Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”
It was a miracle that God would take us, in our unrighteousness, ruined and contaminated by sin and not discard us forever, but instead choose to save us – and to do so despite the unthinkable pain that it would cause Him! But He did it! That is the miracle of Good Friday – the miracle of the passion of the Christ!

As the result of that miracle of Good Friday, you and I can rejoice in the Gospel, the Good News that although '...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23–24).

We will spend eternity benefitting from the fact that “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” as St. Paul wrote to the Romans (Romans 6:23).

To be sure, the phenomenon of three hours of darkness at mid-day, the torn temple curtain, the earthquake, and the other miracles were all supernatural events intended by the heavenly Father to set apart the death of His Son from absolutely every other death—past, present, and future, but the greatest miracle on Good Friday, is the passionate love that was the impulse behind Christ crucified.

As I like to quote Isaac Watts, 'Here His whole Name appears complete; nor wit can guess nor reason prove which of the letters best is writ, the Power, the Wisdom, or the love'.

The love of God, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit for us, is certainly different from the other miracles of the Passion. In fact it is absolutely unique.

And there is nothing like the Gospel. Just as it was God's passion to make it a reality for us, so it deserves to be our passion that the awesome price paid in blood by Christ so that our sins might be forgiven that we need not perish but have everlasting life, should be proclaimed to the end of time and beyond. Amen.

Staying afloat as a Christian

2010-11-11T19:44:00.004-05:00

A new world record has been set in New Zealand for the longest flight by a glider with a flight time lasting 15 hours and covering well in excess of 2000km. It is not easy for a vehicle with no power of it's own to keep afloat like that. The pilot must have been very expert at finding the 'thermals' (warm updrafts) needed to overcome the force of gravity that is such an inescapable constant in the world.

Lately I have been thinking that there is much similarity between Christian living and soaring, beginning with fact that a glider cannot launch itself but must rely upon power beyond itself (the towing aircraft) to get into the air in the first place. Just as the Christian is given salvation from the same God Who loved us first and Whose grace is required every time we need a new beginning when we fail spiritually.

The most enjoyable Christian walk is one in which one's feet hardly seem to touch the ground. Yet to remain inspired and uplifted all the time, however pleasurable it may be, is not easy. If it did not take a lot of skill and effort more Christians would be doing it for the sheer joy of feeling close to Heaven. But most of the time we allow the pull of the earth to get the best of us and we can even end up so earth-bound that we may feel as grumpy and miserable as a wretched unbeliever much of the time.

The forces that conspire to make us crash and burn when we would rather be flying are 'the world (other people), the flesh (our sinful nature) and the devil'.

Bearing that in mind, these things should not keep us grounded any more than gravity and weather have to keep a sailplane from soaring. To keep aloft, what do pilots of un-powered Sailplanes do? They look for thermals. They seek that which can keep them in the air.

'Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness' is what Jesus said. 'The joy of the LORD is your strength', The Bible says. 'Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things' was St. Paul's recipe for sustained gliding above the tribulations of earth (Philippians 4.8).

Even the most successful glide comes to an end. But the inescapable touch-down does not have to be the end of soaring. We sin, but there is forgiveness of sins and there is the grace of God who can and 'will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore' (Psalm 121).

The believer, whose citizenship is in heaven, will want to get back up there and resume gliding as soon as possible and for as long as possible. And, to keep us aloft - 'from where does help come? My help comes from the LORD' (Psalm 121). The thermals are out there and will lift us up. They are God's Word and Sacraments. These do not just provide forgiveness of sins. They also can sweep us off our feet if we let them.

If that has not happened for you, try more of God's Word and Sacraments. Yes - more and more. Get an audio Bible and listen to the Bible for hours on end and see what happens. Mix the Bible with uplifting and edifying thoughts and music. Go to Divine Services every Sunday and pray and worship every day. Hey! Don't tell me you've tried it and it 'didn't work'. Prayer 'without ceasing' has not failed. It has not been tried - and if it has - you WILL see a difference!

'Take time to be holy', the old song put it. Well take time to be holy and you will find that holiness is not where it ends. You will find in that time that you are, at the very least, serene, and may even become elated and euphoric. And yet it is NOT 'feelings and emotions' that sustain you, but the real power of God.

Many sailplane pilots feel pleasure and react emotionally to the experience. Yet at no time do their emotions get the credit for what is happening to them! Not even the best glider pilot can stay in the air just by feeling like it! He must search out and find those forces outside of himself that can defy the gravity that threatens to pull him down.

So in the Christian life, you have to seek and find those spiritual forces outside of yourself that can really keep you soaring! 'Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3.20-21).

Glee tackles God

2010-10-18T10:15:00.002-04:00

Those of you who read my blog entitled, 'Gleeful', know that I have enjoyed this program as one of the only shows on TV that seems to have a soul. Well, a few weeks ago, with their episode entitled, 'Grilled Cheesus', Glee revealed, like never before, the god of it's soul.

Did it have moving moments? OH yes... This is a very carefully choreographed series on many levels, not least the emotional level. Once we find out that the atheist on the faculty lost her faith over her sister's Downe's Syndrome and later see that same handicapped sister profess her simple faith in God to that same embittered godless sister and tenderly promise to pray for her - well...you have to see it to appreciate the emotional impact of that scene.

It is the scene earlier, when the faculty atheist describes the reason why she lost her faith, (a scene the show's writer describes as the one he's most proud of in his whole career (!) that the atheist defends her campaign against religious talk in school by telling her colleague how, in her youth, she prayed (in vain) that her sister, whom she idolized, would get better. Therefore she concluded that 'Asking someone to believe in a fantasy, however comforting, is not a moral thing to do. It's cruel' Furthermore, she goes on to say, it's arrogant. 'It's as arrogant as telling someone how to believe in God, and if they don't accept it - no matter how open hearted or honest their dissent - they're going to hell - that doesn't sound very Christian, does it?'

'Well, if that's what you believe, that's fine - just keep it to yourself' replies her colleague. And then the final word from the atheist is - you guessed it - 'so long as you do the same...'

Thus the writer of Glee reveals the anger and resentment against Christianity that lies behind this episode, if not the whole series. Glee may be a show that exalts the human spirit like no other, but it is also a show that does so at the expense of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the ideal bottom line in a public school, isn't it. 'Just shut up'. Because as soon as people start talking about religion, then the war of words begins. And in Glee's war of words, the unbelievers get all the best lines. The 'believers' only express their faith through ludicrously inept farce (praying to a burned cheese sandwich) or vague - though sometimes moving - appeals to Heaven for a 'Bridge over Troubled Waters'. 'We can't sing about faith, but we can sing about "losing my religion", as one Glee Clubber complains.

Fortunately most the characters who are 'believers' in this episode show none of the 'arrogance' that the Glee writers hate in religion. What is sadly lacking, however is confidence that the true God is capable of revealing Himself and His truth to people.

In one scene, these sincere, but misguided, characters from a variety of denominations and faiths gather to pray around the bedside of a man in a coma. One of them explains that they are doing this because 'one of us is bound to be right'.

As I have to keep telling people. One is, not only bound to be right, but bound to be obviously right. Yet it is not 'politically correct' to say this on TV - particularly when the God who is obviously unique - and obviously right - is the biblical God.

We today in the Western world, are just educated enough and just comfortable enough to think we know what we want in religion and that is all we will accept. But G. K. Chesterton spoke the Truth when he said, "We do not want a religion which is right where we are right. We want a religion which is right where we are wrong."

It is not to be dismissed as 'arrogance' when Christians, informed by God's Word, describe what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is in error.

Would the singers in the Glee Club know a wrong musical note, if they heard it (not that you ever hear a wrong musical note on this show)? Of course they would.

You know what I am going to say next; Right and Wrong exist in reality - so also in religion. That is not 'arrogant'. That is the Truth. That is the 'right where we are wrong' in a society that is in denial about it.

The Good News is that 'Hell' is not the only certainty the biblical God has revealed to us is it? There is also the certainty that 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us'.

'What if God was one of us?' they sang in this episode.

It saddens those who really know the real Jesus Christ, that 'Grilled Cheesus' failed to include the Gospel in this episode. Would it have killed such 'educated', 'enlightened' writers of Glee to mention that, in Christianity, Jesus is not a cheese sandwich, but a historical person - crucified for the salvation of humanity and risen from an empty tomb, providing billions of people with faith in their own resurrection from the dead?

Could not one character have said, 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life'?

God - a figment of my cellphone's imagination?

2010-09-23T21:00:00.001-04:00

'My cellphone has been imagining things lately. Give it a dose of a powerful electronic signal and it starts hearing voices. And I think I can explain this. I have “discovered” that there is a part inside my cellphone's “brain” that seems to process these voices.
But, of course, we know that these “entities” my cellphone is imagining don't really exist. They are “just in its head”. The 'phone is just lonely and depressed that there is nobody 'out there', and so, to relieve it's anxiety (alone with it's thoughts and contemplating its own mortality), my cellphone is getting just enough electrical stimulation from somewhere that it is imagining make-believe entities and hearing their voices'. Just imagine!

Foolish idea? Duhhh! Of course. “Hello!!!” My cell phone WAS DESIGNED WITH WIRING IN IT to process human voices. Those voices it detects are from real people whose existence only a fool would doubt.

Yet, many people are having their faith in God's existence shaken by yet another TV show, this time the Science Channel's program: “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” featured a scientist using a “God helmet” that subjected the temporal lobe of someone's brain to a strong magnetic force. When her stimulated brain felt “spiritual experiences”, the sonorous voice of Morgan Freeman stated that we may have to “re-imagine human experience. God may not have created us. He may not be protecting us. God may simply be – in our minds”.

Yea, right.

You may think my analogy of a cellphone imagining voices is far-fetched. You may say that a cellphone is a complex device, carefully manufactured to receive phone calls from other cellphone, and you would be right. Yet the “brain” in my cellphone is as simple as an oatmeal cookie by comparison to that of a human being!

How about this, boys and girls: God carefully created us with us with the hard-wiring in our brains to process transcendent concepts needed to understand his voice.

It is very poor science to say that neuroscience has determined that God is "just in our heads". Give me a break! Not only has God, our Creator, given us the brains to understand His voice, He has also given us His Word.

God has really good language skills – trust me. God even gave us one holy book that is true – despite the confusion caused by man-made religion. One should expect a God who cares – a God who loved us enough to hard-wire our brains as He did – to communicate with us.

The bonus is – His “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ” (John 1.14)

"Out on a Limb" with the devil?

2010-05-26T10:55:00.004-04:00

As a pastor, it has been my observation that Satan likes to take people "out on a limb" with the aim of leading them out to a vulnerable position, far from the strength of the main "tree", to the point where all it takes is for that limb to give way and they fall, sometimes from the Faith altogether.

There are a few different "limbs" that come to mind:

One of those precarious limbs is the limb of emotion. A Christian is told that the happiness they felt when they first heard of their Saviour should not only characterize their whole experience of being a Christian, but should intensify as time goes on, picking up more and more euphoric moments of ecstasy along the way to perfect holiness. And so the Christian goes out on that limb. Perhaps further out on the limb they are exposed to "speaking in tongues" or some other manifestation of euphoria. And so they go further out, expecting to wake up every morning feeling that Jesus is their Best Friend Forever because they feel so close to God. Well, you know where this is going... One day they wake up and they don't feel the same. Perhaps (gasp) they have even sinned! Yet, they are so far out on the limb of emotion that they cannot go back to the main tree. It is too late, the limb has broken off and crash goes their faith.

Another precarious limb is the limb of reason. Frequently considered the antithesis of emotion, rationalism poses the same threat as emotion in that it takes one out on another limb that can break off, leaving the Christian in a heap on the ground, perhaps with their faith smashed and broken. How does the devil lead Christians out on a limb with reason? It is by reducing their faith more and more to a matter of reasonable conclusions whose strength is based more on scientific proof and historical documentation than on a living relationship with Christ. Life-times otherwise spent in Scripture and prayer are now spent with listening to and engaging in apologetic arguments and rhetorical logic. Further and further out on this limb the believer goes with this until the day when it dawns on her that maybe having better documentation than the other guy doesn't make the biblical God real - just more "plausible". Yet, she is too intellectual now to go back to a relationship with God based on mere Word and Sacraments and so down she goes.

There are other limbs too, I am sure, that Satan uses to lead people far from the sturdy tree of faith, but the point of it all is this. God has said that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom. 10.17). And experience shows that the strongest believers are those whose relationship with God is connected most closely with the mysterious working of the Means of Grace - God's Word and Sacraments.

OK, saying your prayers, reading the Bible, receiving Absolution for sin and communing at Divine Services may not be as exciting as being "on fire for the Lord", being "in love with Jesus" or winning an argument on an internet debate, but it is what characterizes a saving relationship with God and, in the (eternally) long-term, what is more important?

Gleeful

2010-05-17T13:26:00.002-04:00

As a lover of beauty, there are only so many displays of compassion, tenderness, understanding, sympathy, joy and love that I can take before I get a lump in my throat and tears welling up in my eyes. Add to such an experience, the sight and sound of astonishingly well-performed song and choreography and you will see why I am melting with delight after another episode of "Glee" online.

Where has such a television show been all my life?? (I'm 53). So far on TV, I have seen my values as a Christian ridiculed, satirized and insulted. I have seen life itself reduced to cynical darkness. Even cartoons now are desperately dark. I have seen "edgy" avant-garde TV that made me feel as hopeless as the anarchists who produced it. I have been assaulted visually by violence and sickened by lurid depictions of perversion (All without nudity, of course, since this is America) I have also been treated to banal attempts at "family values", lame humour made worse by canned laughter. I have also seen so-called religious programming in which "good wins out", but the quality of the writing was contrived that it fell far short of being much more than a stilted embarrassment. All TV watchers have been tortured in this way for years. I don't need to elaborate further, do I?

Yet now there is "Glee". Although I have yet to see a character come out as a Christian (and probably never will), Glee is easily the most inspirational and uplifting show on TV on so many levels.

I have seen conflicts worked through, physical and emotional handicaps (including Downe's Syndrome and quadriplegic suffering overcome, hard-hearts warmed and amazing, poignant and thrilling singing and that was just one episode. Every episode seems better and more edifying than the last.

Some may say Glee is just escapist fantasy, but I have seen that before and Glee is much more. Yes, it has escapist euphoric music and dancing. Yes it has world-class writing and plenty of comedy - but it also has some serious messages that come through as loud and clear as its show-stopping musical numbers.

When was the last time you could count upon a TV show to be life-affirming, inspirational, thought-provoking, entertaining, moving you to tears at the same time and to deliver that package with every episode? When was the last time you watched "Glee"?

Darwin's Doctrines vs. the Facts

2010-01-15T14:52:00.002-05:00

As Mark Twain once quipped: ‘There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact’. Last year marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin whose dubious theory of Evolution plays fast and loose with the facts, as I demonstrate below.

The fact is: The known universe itself exists as it does because of many variables which, if not precisely as they are now, would render the universe itself so different, that we would not exist. The doctrine Evolution asks us to believe is that there are countless parallel universes that must have developed spontaneously and we happen to be in the one that is able to sustain life. This really is a doctrine because there is no scientific proof whatsoever that there are any other universes than this one.

The fact is: The features of our planet and its moon point to the impossibility of it being old enough to support the absurd periods of time required by Evolutionary doctrine. Everything from the mere inch-deep dust on the moon to the Polonium 210 halos in rocks on earth show this. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe keeps adding millions of years at will even though carbon 14 dating is left far behind.

This brings us to the ‘Laws of Nature’ that Evolutionary doctrine treats with contempt. The Law of entropy says that everything runs down if left to itself. It does not automatically get better (or more evolved). (The same is true of the Laws of Thermodynamics) The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe that life evolves from the simple to the complex with all creatures, given enough time, on their way toward evolving into ‘higher forms’ of themselves.

What about the law that matter is neither created nor destroyed? The facts bear this out. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that some random ‘big bang’ resulted in the universe. Does that doctrine show itself to be more scientific (require less ‘faith’) than the biblical doctrine of creation?

The fact is: the earth is perfectly suited for life to thrive. Is this a coincidence of monumental proportions? Both Creationists and Evolutionists say no. The fact is: life as we know it thrives only when the environment is suited to it. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that life suited itself (adapted itself) to thrive in earth’s (or any planet’s) environment. Is that a fact scientifically? Let them find life (other than as we know it) in an alien environment or create life under laboratory or any other conditions, and then they can claim to be scientific rather than simply doctrinaire.

The facts are that living things always produce young like their parents. (The Law of Biogenesis). Believers in Evolution won’t accept such a law. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that life forms give birth eventually to young unlike themselves and eventually utterly different ‘more highly evolved’ forms of life (birds from lizards &c.).

The facts are that mutations or odd individuals produced by chromosomal change (e.g. Down’s Syndrome), that occur in nature are overwhelmingly inclined to be harmful (99%). And even if they are not lethal, the mutations are recessive traits and don’t get transmitted to subsequent generations. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that favorable mutations or chromosomal changes have occurred simultaneously to enough individuals to change them from one species into another.

The facts are that we have found no fossil evidence of ‘missing link’ life forms. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that there must be millions and millions of such missing links. (Some desperate Evolutionists have even concocted hoaxes in the past). Missing links amount to missing facts that expose Darwinism as doctrine-based, not fact-based.

The facts are we see “irreducibly complex” living things that - without having all the features they have – would not exist in the first place. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that these organisms lived prior to having these features and gradually acquired them by “natural selection”. Darwin himself conceded that, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." 1

The facts are that the current population of the world is most consistent with descent from the six members of Noah’s family over a period of around 6,000 years. The doctrine Evolutionary theory asks us to believe is that man gradually evolved over millions of years. The absurdity of Evolutionary theory is clear. If man were between 1 and 14 million years old (Evolutionists can’t decide), then people would now populate the earth to something like the tune of 10602. Even if it were ‘only’ 10 to the one-hundredth power the world’s population would be incomparably different from what the facts are2.

The fact is: by almost anyone’s standards, Evolutionary theory requires more than enough faith (and worship?) to be classified as religion rather than science. Darwinism should come out of the closet as the religion that it is, rather than benefit from the popular credence given to science. As a religion, on a “level playing field” against Christianity, Darwinism would be defeated. But by masquerading as “science” and benefitting from the credence real science deserves, Darwinism gains followers as it moves into its third century.

God forbid that we are so deceived by “junk science” that me miss what science is intended to show us: the glory of God.

The fact is: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.(Psalm 19.1-4)
It Christianity “doctrine-based”? Of course it is. But our faith is also fact-based, with plenty of evidence all around us in both the natural world and the historical world of human experience. The fact is: God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Last month I talked about the problem of “invisibility”. This month I remind you of the old adage: “there are none so blind as those who would not see”. What a sin it is for many who are powerful scientists to fail to see the evidence because they cannot cope with the implications of it! Of them it was written long ago: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator - who is forever praised. Amen” (Romans 1:25).

Col. Klink vs. Hogan's Heroes

2009-12-22T16:37:00.004-05:00

Watch Hogans Heroes as I did for a huge chunk of my child-hood and you may see a resemblance between Col. Klink and I.

Klink is not worldly wise, un-like his adversary and at a disadvantage because he naively respects and trusts people.

Among many members of his “captive audience”, Klink's authority is disputed and his words, however firmly pronounced are ridiculed and disregarded.

Although he has an easy smile and and a timidity born of a subconscious awareness of his own inadequacy, Klink acts like a stupid man who is easily and regularly out-maneuvered by his adversary, Col. Hogan.

Theologically, Wilhelm Klink represents the overstretched clergyman, trying to maintain a church from which no one “escapes”. While Col. Hogan, on the other hand represents the uninhibited anti-Christian “world” that lives by situation ethics and makes constant lying and breaking the rules seem glamorous and even heroic.

Like Klink, I find myself to be the impressively uniformed but intellectually impotent guy with a position that is almost more than he can handle (despite delusions of gallantry), who ends up the hapless and gullible foil of the suave and cunning Col. Hogan.

From the world's perspective, I am (at best) the straight-laced unpopular martinet to his uninhibited and popular rogue. At worst, I am the bad guy, through a combination of my association with an unpopular institution (the church) and my own incompetence.

Who are using their minds and who aren't?

2009-12-11T09:25:00.003-05:00

Although ridiculing our intelligence plays a big part in their campaign against believers, atheists cannot really prove that believers are stupid. Too many smart people have been believers – Sir Isaac Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Pasteur and many more come to mind. The geneticist Gregor Mendel was even an ordained clergyman. No - atheists cannot prove that believers lack intelligence. Nor can believers argue that atheists are stupid. There are plenty of clever ones out there, as we know. They are constantly writing books and making films to expose themselves to us.

What we can agree on is that none of us “knows it all” and that all of us are missing something. Unlimited striving to attain further knowledge and understanding is something unbelievers and believers alike should be doing as human beings. Humility before the vast expanse of the unknown is a good thing. Arrogance is inconsistent with any claim to truly seeking knowledge. This is why atheists need to stop posturing as “know it alls” and admit that they are missing that sense of the reality of spiritual things that believers are getting by the billions, through all times and places.

Am I saying that atheists aren't “spiritual”? Yes. That is my argument. They are such materialists that they have utterly excluded the possibility that they will ever receive the spiritual “signals” that God is giving other human beings. As Jesus would put it, atheists have “blasphemed the Holy Spirit” and committed “the unforgivable sin”. This is because atheists have switched off their access to the only Gospel that can save them and committed themselves to not listening to only voice that can describe to them that world of God that human brains have been hard-wired to contemplate.

Ironically, of course, atheists claim to be the ones who are using their minds and would accuse believers of closing theirs and “committing intellectual suicide”. What seems to be the case, however, is that the atheists are refusing to use their whole brains, by never letting their thoughts go to that part of the brain that God designed to grasp the transcendent. They are closed-minded and proud of it! Just look at their popular arguments, in print and on YouTube etc. They claim they can rip to shreds anyone who claims that human minds should be open to the spiritual. To them, religious certainty and even spiritual openess are equivalent to the absurd willingness to see some “spaghetti monster in the sky”.

But are the things to which believers minds are open nothing more than celestial pasta, or “dragons on the street” or other hallucinations we are accused of foisting upon the world? No. Atheistic attempts to impune religious belief as ridiculous are but their own sad attempts to justify the closing of their own minds.

The question still remains: Who are really using their heads and who aren't?

What's the big deal about invisibility?

2009-12-09T10:34:00.003-05:00

Epiphany” (from the Greek ἐπιφάνεια) means “appearance", "manifestation") and is a season beginning next month that celebrates the occasions when the divine nature of Christ was revealed at various times in the Scripture. Epiphany commemorates such things as the star of Bethlehem and the miracles and transfiguration of Christ. Such things made Christ's identity as God visible during an earthly ministry when His divine nature was usually invisible.

Before Christmas, I again led a Bible Study for a group of blind people. As always, they were a wonderful group with whom to share Christian faith – and you know what? They didn't have a problem with God's invisibility! They didn't have a problem with angels being invisible, Heaven being invisible, all evidence of God's existence being invisible to them – because, as visually handicapped people, everything was invisible to them.

Their faith brought home once more to me the fatuous foolishness of the argument of today's atheists that we believers should be ashamed of our God because He is normally not visible. They say “they don't see the evidence of God” and the burden of proof is with us to show that God is real.

Jesus said, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3.8). Invisibility is part of the realm of faith, but, having said that, faith must “take a number”, because it is but one of countless invisible realities that we live with every day and believe in, at times staking our lives upon, despite not being visible to our eyes.

How many natural (and man-made) phenomena are invisible to you, yet you don't doubt their existence? We use wireless internet – and that signal, like other man-made television, radio and other waves, criss-crossing all over us all the time is invisible. Add to that all natural cosmic radiation and waves and you have a huge amount of reality that is invisible. Now, what about all those things that are too small to see the electrons and protons of atomic physics without which our life would be impossible? Their nature, in addition to being invisible, is largely theoretical!

And how many historical realities are invisible to you? Did you see the local water authority test your drinking water for safety before you poured yourself a glass? How do you know it's safe? And, looking further back, do you see Alexander the Great conquering his vast empire. Do you see America's founding father planning to build a new nation? Were you there to “see” anything that took place before the invention of the photograph? Are you sure the great-great Aunt you had really existed, since you have never seen her? Yes it is absurd to doubt facts of history that are “invisible”. By the same token it is absurd to waste one nano-second doubting the realities of God, let alone jeopardize your eternal salvation, just because they are invisible at the moment. Temporary invisibility really is no big deal!

Instead, this Epiphany and always, thank God that He sent His Son to be our Redeemer and Savior. For He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1.15-16).

"...it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants"

2009-11-13T10:16:00.002-05:00

 To die for. That is they way people sometimes describe something worthy of the highest possible price. But we exaggerate by that expression, because death really is too high a price for a human being to pay, if you think about it. If Momma's lasagna really was “to die for” and you died – how could you enjoy a single serving because you'd be dead? Ultimately physical death is too expensive a price.

Is there price that is too high for even God to pay? You may be surprised to hear that the answer to that question is 'yes'. A bit further on in today's Epistle we are told ...”it is not angels He helps but Abrahams's descendants”. Why not help angels who sinned? You don't hear any preachers asking that question, but that does not mean it is not a good question. And this is the answer - redeeming fallen angels would be too high a price to pay, even for God.

Why too high a price to redeem sinful angels? Because God designed angels to taste only one kind of death for their sins – eternal death. Remember how Jesus tells us that God created eternal damnation ”for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.41).

If God were to show His redeeming love for any angels that sinned, and tasted their death, He would have had to be banished from Heaven never to return. You see why that would not be practical as a demonstration of redeeming love on the part of God's Son. The price would literally be too high even for God.

So God created a creature that He could afford to redeem and forgive by paying for their sins Himself. God created us, creatures created capable of two deaths – the eternal death that the devils die, but also physical death – a death that God's Son could taste without Christ having to be forever separated from His Father.

So the author to the Hebrews tells us, “Since the children have flesh and blood (another way of saying human mortality), He too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps but Abrahams's descendants.

For this reason he had to be make like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (verses 14-18).

Notice is says “He had to be made like His brothers”. This is the way it had to be. Realistically, God could not make atonement for the angels that sinned, but He could make and it was fitting to make, creatures for whom He could make atonement and that is what God did.

And as He created us to be redeemed and as He carried out His loving plan to demonstrate His redeeming grace, mercy and love by means of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the angels of God who had not sinned sang for joy and still find God's demonstration of love toward us endlessly delightful.

Even now, scripture tells us, the holy angels, archangels and all the company of heaven are focussing their praise on the fact that Christ “was slain and by His blood ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5.9).

Hebrews says to us, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers”.

The author to the Hebrews invites us to contemplate the wonder of the fact that it was for people like us that our Savior came. People  powerless over their lot in life. People whose lives are, at times, filled with toil  and pain. People who fear death. But people whom the Son of the living God has made to be His brothers through paying the ultimate price.

'...we see Jesus (he writes), ... he suffered death, so that, by the grace of God, He might taste death for everyone.'

How remarkable (by virtue of His incarnation and humiliation) to be able to say of the Son of God, “He understands the taste  of death”. He knows what it means to live in conditions that are far below  what they should be.  And it's not just that He understands from afar, as if He has some kind of intellectual knowledge, almost like a academic analysis of  suffering. He's not like some politicians who claim to "feel your pain,"  when you can bet that they really have no clue. 

No, Jesus left the glory of heaven to come and live among human beings as a man. He  who created all our material universe by the word of His mouth, became part of this  creation, being made "lower than the angels" that He might redeem humans.

You see, He didn't just come here to understand our plight; He came  to do something about it. And “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” caused Him to suffer in order that He  might be the perfect Author of our salvation.^¹

He knows suffering. He knows  pain. He knows anguish, disappointment, grief, sorrow and rejection. "He  was stricken by God, smitten and afflicted. He was wounded for our  transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:4b_5). 

Whatever you have suffered in this life, He knows it. He  experienced all that you've suffered and more. For the last time I checked,  there wasn't anyone of us who had been whipped, beaten, stabbed, and nailed  to a cross for even our own sins, let alone the sins of other people.

Jesus  endured all of that so that you might never have to know the eternal agony  of hell.  Dear brother or sister, you don't have to fear death. You don't  have to live as though the current state of your existence is the way things  always will and must be. Your Savior wants better things for you. He wants  a better life for you. He wants to meet you in His house, at His table, to  fill you with Himself, and to give you a peace that passes understanding as a brother would ideally want to do for his brothers. 

I know there are times that you don't believe that. I know there are times when you wonder where He is and why He hasn't intervened to rescue  you from your circumstances. I know there are times when you wonder if He  really cares or if He is even there at all. You feel angry. You feel confused. You feel abandoned. You feel alone. You feel unloved and  unwanted. I know you do. 

All I can say to you, in the midst of your struggles,  is wait. Scripture says: "They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their  strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not  be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31). God works in  His own time, and though it may not seem so at the time, He always comes  through. The only question, during any test of faith, is 'will we come through'? And when we don't, God is there to forgive us for our shortcoming, sins and lack of faith.

To comfort us who so often feel alone (unnecessarily I might add) God's word reminds us, “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those (like us!) who are being tempted”.

This is all part of what you might call the way we live now. We may  never know why we suffer the way we do. We can never be sure when to expect  the Lord to open His hand of blessing, or for how long. (And certainly, He  is not bound to our circumstances. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, He  can bless us even if we're still in the fire.) But there are two things we  can always count on: 1) nothing in this life ever stays the same, and 2)  Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.  Amen.

1Ephesians 3.9-10

Triumph of the Villains

2009-11-11T09:13:00.004-05:00

Some Remembrance Day thoughts:

In 1935 the great filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, produced a documentary with the title "Triumph des Willens". Ten years later proud empires lay in ruins and 60 million people were dead.

In English, the title of Riefenstahl's film translates as "the Triumph of the Will" (a reference to the domination of the then newly-elected Hitler), but ironically the German word "Willens" in the title is pronounced like the English word: "villains". Hence the title of his blog: "Triumph of the Villains".

As a Christian, I believe that there will be a day of reckoning when the forces of evil will be defeated forever.

Yet even that sacred truth does not bring back all that was destroyed by the villainy that swept the world in the 20th century.

And, tragically, the legacy of Darwinism, Nietzschean atheism and eugenics that led to the slaughter of millions of people is still a strong force behind not only the abortion of millions of unborn children today, but also the undermining of the faith of countless children through nihilistic "religious education".

The villains still have their victims, as long as people are taught to believe that God has no objective existence and we are all mere animals who answer to nothing but our own self-interest, that of our "race" or of our national interest.

Maranatha - I say - come, Lord Jesus and end the triumph of the villains eternally.

Lawful Killing, as Opposed to Murder and Terrorism

2009-11-06T14:28:00.006-05:00

The “Guy Fawkes Day” shooting rampage at Fort Hood on the 5^th of November, on top of thoughts of Veterans' Day, Remembrance, two ongoing wars in central Asia, and this week's catechesis I presented to my students on the “5^th Commandment” make up a cluster of things this week that have motivated me to say something about the theology of lawful killing.

What we have in the person of Nidal Malik Hasan, is a very confused soldier such as the one depicted by Telli Savalas in the film “The Dirty Dozen”. In a prison cell he tries to rationalize his murders with an allusion to the Bible and says, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”, but he adds that “God doesn't say who will be his instrument”. That is where he is wrong, of course. Unless you happen to be a biblically illiterate pacifist, you will recognize that the biblical God has clearly established who will be his instrument of retributive justice and who will “turn the other cheek” and forgive.

The instrument of retributive justice is government, acting on behalf of God and on behalf of all of us as a community. Responsibility for retributive justice is not given to individual citizens to execute on their own behalf. The ones who are told “judge not, lest ye be judged”, “turn the other cheek”, “love your enemies”, “forgive seventy times seven times” and so forth, are private individuals, not government, not the police and not the military. Officials acting publicly, on behalf of the rest of us, are told to judge, are told to avenge and (yes) are told to kill.

Since we humans have contaminated our world with sin and evil, God, out of love for us, established the concept of a justice system to prevent us from being overwhelmed by crime. He ordained that a “sword” be placed in the hands of those who represent our community and serve as officers in government. St. Paul says of such an earthly governor, that, ”...he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13.4).

In his teaching on the 5^th Commandment in his Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes, “...God and government are not included in this commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”). ... To punish evildoers, God has delegated His authority to the government ...what is forbidden in this commandment is forbidden to the individual in his relationship with anyone else, but not to the government” (181 – p.379 in CONCORDIA, McCain ed.).

Christians, acting as private individuals may not “take the law into their own hands”. We are to offer our personal forgiveness perpetually to offenders in every case and then let our community take vengeance if needed. If our community judges that a criminals have forfeited their right to live among us, offenders will be banished to prison cells or to a scaffold, but individual Christians will not deny criminals our personal forgiveness, even as we require a judge to pass sentence and an executioner to carry out his vocation.

There is no contradiction in this. It is the vocation of public officials to punish criminals and it is the vocation of sinners to offer their personal forgiveness to all others even as we expect God to forgive us our trespasses and sins (Matt. 6.15). The same applies to the apparent contradiction implied in the phrase “we come in peace – shoot to kill” It may indeed be the case that members of a “peace-keeping force” may have to “fire a shot in anger” precisely in order to carry out their vocation of providing a peaceful environment for the rest of the community.

The same goes for warfare. If you know nothing else about “Just War” theory, you can tell by the words “just war”, that it may be proposed that there is such a thing as ethical, moral and lawful killing on a large scale as in war-time. You might even use a phrase like “state sponsored hate”, if you like, as long as you understand its context in the legitimate execution of justice in a world where there is “a time to love and a time to hate” (Ecc. 3.8). In terms of Judeo-Christian civilization you might say that everything from Joshua and the Battle of Jerico to Operation Iraqi Freedom is state-sponsored hate. Call it righteous indignation, properly channelled, according to the rule of law.

Indignation, however, is not always righteous, as we know – even on the part of states and communities. Earthly authorities are ordained by God to represent Him but they frequently and notoriously abuse their position. Such abuse, however does not discredit the principal of government any more than the concept of a police force is discredited because the Nazis had a gestapo.

Terrorism, if it is state-sponsored, is an example of abuse of power by a government. This is because terrorism, whether conducted by governments, groups or individuals is not an ordered and measured use of force, but rather an abuse of force in which non-combatants, “innocents” and by-standers are more than collateral damage, but actually targets. Terrorists are not soldiers, but dastardly murderers who refuse to grasp the difference between lawful and unlawful killing. Terrorist acts may be intended to “send a message” but any content to that message is obscured and discredited by the abuse of violence involved in conveying it.

Major Hasan, a soldier, was NOT following our orders. Instead he acted as a terrorist, driven, not by legitimate government, but by a diabolical application of his fanatical Muslim beliefs. Yet, whatever the ideological basis, the methods yield the same deplorable results. Terrorism, we should remember, is nothing new – only the methods have changed through the years. Prior to the Irish sectarian bombings and Al Qaeda-style attacks in our lifetimes, terrorism was involved in violence from the barbarian raids in the dark ages to the carpet bombings of the 20^th century. All were terrorism because they were an abuse of force and sinfully distant from any meaningful expression of retributive justice.

We are in the midst of a season of honoring soldiers – the living and the dead – who served and continue to serve our communities and our civilization by the calling that was given to them by God, through us. Let us, while we are in this world of sin and evil, contemplate the cross that these men and women have offered to take upon their shoulders out of love for their country and their God. And as we contemplate the differences between lawful killing, murder and terrorism, let us honor their service by wisely discerning those distinctions and thereby reflect God's mercy in His gracious dealings with us – in Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

2009-08-01T12:24:00.001-04:00

Issues, Etc. Buttongreat free widgetsWidgetbox

Christ and the Holocaust

2009-03-25T20:48:00.001-04:00

As another round of debates involving Christians and the holocaust takes place, there is something that people need to get right about Christ and the Holocaust: Christ was not the cause of the Holocaust. He was Himself a Jewish victim of antisemitism and His death was a holocaust.

The word “holocaust” is a sacrificial term. In places such as Genesis 22, the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “olah”, meaning “burnt offering” uses the word “holokauston” from which we get the word “holocaust”. And, although His sacrifice did not include being burnt, Jesus was nevertheless dying as a sacrifice and there was more than a little “anti-semitism” in the torment this particular Jew endured. Those Gentile soldiers relished the idea of taking their frustration out on all Jews by abusing one Jewish prisoner, calling Him the “King of the Jews.”

And where was God as all this was happening? That is the haunting question people ask regarding the 20th century “Shoah”. The answer in this case is that God was not indifferent as Jesus own personal “holocaust” went on. God was in Christ, the Messiah, reconciling the world to Himself, through the sacrifice His Jewish Son was making:

“...in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ...For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5.19-21).

sexualizing, dumbing down and the reprobate mind

2009-01-14T10:18:00.005-05:00

I am probably going out on a limb with this one, but here goes. I am no expert, but I suspect there is a link between the so-called "sexual revolution" and the "dumbing down" of Western culture.

You don't have to know much about brain function to know that sexual thinking is a "lower brain" function. Not to be confused with romance - transcendent thinking that makes use of higher brain function - mere sexualization involves very little thinking. And Brains tend to change over time based on habitual thought patterns. The more human thinking is habitually sexualized, the less higher brain function will take place out of sheer habit. By the same token lower thinking will become ingrained. The result is all around us and our sexualized society is getting "dumber and dumberer".

"You do that and it will stay that way", is a broadly accurate description of brain function.

Amid all that civilization stands to lose, a clear and worrying consequence of such lowered thinking is the tendency of our society to become less and less concerned with the things of God. I believe there may be a link here, too, between sexualization of human thinking and the loss of theology.

Even those attempts by some religions to historically link spirituality with sex are losing ground as people lower and lower their vision of what human life is about.

The Authorized Version of the Bible (KJV) suggests that God Himself may be washing His hands of those who have lost interest in theology, when the apostle St. Paul says, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind..." (Romans 1:28) To the Philippians he writes that, "many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things" (Philippians 3.18-19).

What you “set your mind” on can put all of your thinking at risk of becoming foolish. And atheism is caused by foolishness. Long ago it was written, “the fool says in his heart, 'there is no God'” (Psalm 14.1) And “thinking themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1.22) Clearly the sophomoric and lame arguments against the biblical God by such new atheism champions like Oxford University's Richard Dawkins, and other best-selling authors, show that no citadels of civilization are safe from the onslaught of mental stupidity today. One is at a loss to say what is more remarkable: that otherwise intelligent, articulate and witty people advance such dumb arguments or that educated and thinking people buy them.

You decide. And then ask yourself how you and I can follow the advice of St. James and remain aware that "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: ...to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1.27).

What makes it so important to guard our thoughts is that the eternal destiny of souls is at stake. St. Paul wrote to the Romans about the hazard of what I am calling “lower thinking” when he warned, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8.5-8).

God will not accept atheists into Heaven. Even Christians can lose their faith depending upon how their thinking is being trained. As Jesus said, "I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away" (Luke 19.26).

Already you, reader, may feel your faith has taken some hits lately, even though you might not know why. But think about it. Burns happen when living tissue is exposed to extreme heat. The damage is done and healing is difficult or impossible. In a similar way Christian faith is at risk of real damage when exposed to the amorality and sexualization around us. Or “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?”(Proverbs 6.27-28)

"Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul" (1 Peter 2.11).

Recognize the enemy of your soul and then, ”Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12.2).

Happy about Reformation?

2008-10-31T10:03:00.005-04:00

Yes - I'm still happy about Reformation. That's because Reformation is very much an adjustment that needs to be made in a world spoiled by human sin. An analogy could be made between the Reformation and the drinking water purification process that we are all quite happy about!

It used to be that you could dip your hands in a local stream and drink fresh water – but people ruined it. This doesn’t mean we can no longer enjoy drinking water. Thanks to the purification process, you can hold a clear glass of water in your hand that is pure to a microscopic level. We do this all the time - every time we enjoy a glass of pure water.

It is a fact of life, since the Fall of man and the loss of the garden of Eden, that people ruin nice things. But that does not mean they can’t be restored in some cases.

But what about the person who argues that the reformation was not necessary back then and is certainly redundant today? They are like people trying to argue that drinking water doesn’t need to be purified, but that the things we try to filter out should instead be welcomed as the “natural development” of drinking water (!).

As with so many things in modern Christianity the Reformation also is defined differently between conservatives and liberals. For the “rebellious children” in the dysfunctional Christian family, the Progressive, the Innovator, the Reformation is the continuation of the evolution of the Christian religion. Their twist on the concept of Semper Reformanda (perpetual reformation) is that religion is a part of human evolution, invented by humans and continually being updated by the same humans, contradicting, discarding and leaving behind past dogmas once believed.

This is not to be confused with the Roman and Eastern idea that the hierarchy is bound to develop “doctrines of the faith” as the centuries go by, without contradicting the past, of course. Dogmas unknown to the believers of New Testament times are simply being added by the same Spirit (so they say), working through Popes and Councils. They then claim to be the parents, addressing the “compliant children” in the dysfunctional Christian family to submit to their judgment.

Nevertheless, whether it is reckless liberal evolutionary change or patronizing heavy-handed hierarchical change – it is still corrupting change and we should be happy for the re-pristinating, purifying spirit of the Lutheran Reformation – even today. Human tampering is human tampering whether in the 16th century or the 21st century.

Conservatives Lutherans would argue that they are compliant children, too, but submit to drinking the water that has been purified. For them, the Reformation is precisely the opposite of what the evolutionist pictures it to be. Far from being explained as part of the “development of religion”, the Reformation is anti evolutionary – anti-development.

In contrast to the humanists and more radical reformers of their time, the Lutheran Reformers were not jumping on the bandwagon of all change. They were actually staking their lives on the condemnation of some of the changes they identified. Luther, Melanchthon and the others were appreciative of improvements in technology (the printing press) and scholarship (renaissance learning) BUT they condemned the Papacy for the changes they called corruptions – pollution of the pure water that Christians deserved to drink.

They were not like today’s Muslim Fundamentalists – living in the past and trying to re-impose the dark ages. Lutheran Reformers live in the present, but still recognize pollution in the water when they see it.

C’est la vie, really. It used to be that humanity could live in the Garden of Eden, but people ruined it.

It used to be that you could dip your hands in a local stream and drink fresh water – but people ruined it.

It used to be you could hop on a plane, ticket in hand, without waiting in a long security line - but people ruined it.

It used to be that you could telephone a home or business and a human being would answer back – but people ruined it.

It used to be you could have a chat with a child on the street - but people ruined it.

It used to be that you could give money to needy people who stop by the church – but people ruined it.

It used to be that you could pick up any publicly available book, magazine or watch any TV show or film without any risk of being corrupted or scarred for life by what you see or read – but people ruined it.

It used to be that human beings knew the will of God and knew where they could find His word – but people ruined it.

As Jesus tells us – one of the things that people have been ruining for centuries is religion! Quoting from Isaiah, Christ condemned “teaching mere human rules as though they were the doctrines of God” (Matthew 15.9).

So why am I happy for the Reformation? For the same reason I am happy to be able to pour myself a pure glass of water: People have ruined and continue to ruin religion through arrogant, rebellious, selfish, and stupid human tampering. Thank God for the purification process as long as it is still needed.

"High Church", a poem based on "High Flight"

2008-10-17T16:21:00.004-04:00

"High Flight" is one of my favourite poems. You may have read it. You may have seen the YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qqVRBZO5gc

Now - read my version, written after a visit to the Washington National Cathedral for choral evensong. I call it "High Church".

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941 (aged 19)

High Church

Oh! I have left the vacuous hassled world behind.

And settled silently into Gothic-carved woodwork;

Stunned I’ve knelt, and joined the transfixed multitude

Of ordinary people – caught up in a place

Unlike any other – echoing with soaring sounds

Bathed in a thousand stained glass beams of light

I’ve lost myself under lofty vaults of stone

Suspended between earth and heaven,

Up, up the high, lofty portals of beauty itself,

I’ve felt the cosmic condescension of grace

Looked upon the faces of angels and with sacred, solemn elation beheld,

The exalted realm of divine worship;

With opened heart, I’ve bent my ears,

Listened to the choir and heard the voice of God.

Pastor Jonathan Naumann

Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod

Addicted to Cathedral services (aged 51)

Angels and the Gospel

2008-07-15T13:14:00.001-04:00

The involvement of angels with the Gospel should be better known than it is. Yet the story of that relationship between Angels and the Gospel begins with the creation of the material universe itself.

ANGELS were witnesses to the creation of the visible universe and rejoiced at it (Job 38.4-7).

The first two chapters of the book of Genesis give us the biblical account of the six-day creation, but Job 38 informs us of something that Moses does not mention – namely, that the creation of the material universe had witnesses. Yes, creatures created by God prior to us, and who inhabit a world that is invisible to us, were witnesses to what we call the visible (or material) world, and, furthermore – these creatures rejoiced to observe that creation.

In Job 38.7 God asks that ancient patriarch:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

5 Who determined its measurements- surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?

6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,

7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7)

Remember what the angels had been witnesses to so far – before they witnessed the creation of us. Among other things, they had witnessed the banishment and eternal condemnation of those angels among them who sinned. Everyone of them could say, as Jesus later said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” ( Luke 10.18).

In the punishment of the rebellious angels, the loyal angels witnessed the anger of God against sin. They were witnesses to His righteous indignation and they were witnesses to God’s implacable justice in handing down damnation against sin. The angels had witnessed what theologians call God’s “alien work” (Lat. Opus alienum) of destroying that which is imperfect.

But where and when would the holy angels witness the work that is more proper to God? (His opus proprium) When would they witness Him creating something? (Like us, angels can hardly enjoy witnessing their own creation) So when would they witness Him creating something. And, especially, when would they see Him redeeming sinners? How would they see Him giving grace to the unworthy? When would they witness His forgiving love? Where would they see a demonstration of the mercy of God that adorns the pages of Scripture?

“ Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7.18-19).

“Let the heavens praise your wonders, O LORD, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! For who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him? O LORD God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O LORD, with your faithfulness all around you?” (Psalm 89:5-8).

All of those wonderful qualities of God were aspects of His character that He wanted those angels to see! He knew they would rejoice to see it and spend eternity worshipping Him for it. But, in order for His angels to witness God’s creative power and redeeming love, He chose to create another world: ours. And He would create a creature ideally suited for this particular demonstration of love: us.

“For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:16-17).

HUMANS are special-featured-creatures

Now human beings, created “in the image of God” have a feature that God does not have that I would like to consider. That feature is what I call the “double death” feature.

Angels, although created to be immortal, could still face “death” if they sinned and that one death would be, although not physical, nevertheless final and eternal. That is their one and only death. God’s word tells us that hell is

“…eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

Yet when God created humans, unique among all His creatures, He created us with the option of not one, but two deaths. These two deaths that humans can die, both physical death and eternal death each have a certain respective finality, yet they are still not the same and it is mercifully possible to experience the one, but not the other.

“Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire”. (Revelation 20:13-15)

You see, the option of two deaths, that humans have, gives us a built-in advantage that is not only advantageous to us, but also to God, who planned to use our physical death as the centrepiece of a grand demonstration of His love from the very creation of our world. I refer to the atoning sacrificial death of God’s son.

For God demonstrated His love for us in this way – that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8).

Had humans been like the angels, with only a single kind of death that was possible for us (the eternal kind), then for Christ to demonstrate His love for us by sparing us the punishment that we deserved and substituting Himself instead under the judgment of God, God’s Son would have to endure eternal death and be permanently separated from His Father – separating the persons of the Holy Trinity forever – hardly a practical option! But, as we humans are capable of being punished for sin with two kinds of death, Jesus could experience one of them (physical death) and His demonstration would still serve its purpose.

Because Christ’s death successfully demonstrated that God was loving and merciful enough to redeem sinners at tremendous cost, both humans and angels benefited enormously and God is glorified eternally as a direct result.

Humans benefit, because we can be forgiven our sins and be spared from eternal death (a priceless benefit!).
Angels benefit, because only in our redemption could the they observe God, their creator, showing mercy and forgiveness toward sinners without compromising His perfect justice – something they could never have seen had humans never been created, fallen into sin and been redeemed through the atoning sacrifice of God’s Son.
And, ultimately God benefits, so to speak, because, as the result of what the crucified and risen Christ has done, both humans and angels join together to give Him endless praise for the perfect combination of righteousness and grace that the redemption of humanity displays.

St. Paul wrote,

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Romans 3.23-26).

Consider an historic bottle of brandy. It could be kept "eternally" in a museum or it could "die" by having its cork removed and its contents poured out. Yet, how foolish it would be for that bottle to resent it's "death". It was obviously designed to have its cork removed and its contents poured out. Even after its first "death", the brandy bottle would not have to have a second death (be trashed). It could live forever in someone's prized bottle collection. God seems to have designed us well to serve the purpose of His glory. Seeing physical death this way almost rehabilitates it, or at least recognizes that human physical death serves a higher purpose by showcasing the surpassing love of God.

SALVATION is a grand demonstration “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places”

Part of Christian faith is recognition of the cosmic scope of GOD'S eternal love. God asked Job the haunting question, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? ...when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (38.7)

To that question we are left breathless. We have no answer because we were not there. But we are told who was there. God tells us who sang for joy to see our world created – it was His heavenly host, the “morning stars”, the “sons of God”, His holy angels! Those same angels that are our guardians who always behold the face of our Father in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). Those angels who are sent to serve those who are inheriting salvation (Hebrews 1.14). Those same angels are watching the unfolding of our lives and the working out of God’s plan to save us through the sacrifice of His Son, ever since we were created. St. Peter tells us that “angels long to look into these things” (1 Peter 1.12).

For our salvation is

“the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the angelic authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:9-11).

HUMAN SALVATION is a tremendous source of delight to the angels

Scripture gives us plenty of glimpses of angels worshipping God in Heaven. But how often do we note that the worship which angels render to God is related to, among other things, their knowledge of the history of human salvation?

“…they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth." Then I looked, and I heard … the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" (Revelation 5:9-12).

Human salvation is ultimately the only salvation they have ever seen, for no salvation was offered to any fallen angel who sinned. Yet, although it is about the rescue from eternal damnation of another species (humanity), human salvation is a tremendous source of delight to the angels. If the founding of the material universe itself made the angels shout for joy (Job 38.7), by the same token the repentance and salvation of every individual in that universe gives them great cause for rejoicing in praise of God’s love.

(Jesus said) “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance… Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Luke 15:7-10

THE ANSWER to the question of why we exist – the purpose of human existence

The angels’ joy at the beginning of our world possibly suggests that the whole material universe was made as a demonstration to them of His love. (A “Grand Demonstration”, as Dr.Jay Adams called it).

Jesus Christ is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (KJV) or, as the New Living Translation puts it. “the Lamb who was killed before the world was made” (Revelation 13.8).

“…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4).

“you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:18-20)

Knowing before He created the earth that God’s beloved Son would have to die for it, why else did He proceed? Unless it was for a greater good, no father would make something that He knew would cost him the life of his beloved son. He wouldn’t even bother to build such a thing. So why did God go ahead and create us? The angels may hold the answer to this frequently asked question.

Why did God make humans capable of a double death?

2008-03-14T22:20:00.005-04:00

I find it fascinating to consider that we humans were created differently with regard to death than both animals and angels were. Animals, with no immortal souls, were created with only one death that awaited them – namely physical death.

Angels, although created to be immortal, could still face death if they sinned and that one death would be, although not physical, nevertheless final and eternal. God’s word tells us that God created eternal hell for the devil and his angels – that is their one and only death.

Yet when God created humans, unique among all His creatures, He created us with the option of not one, but two deaths. These two deaths that humans can die, both physical death and eternal death each have a certain respective finality, yet they are still not the same and it is mercifully possible to experience the one, but not the other.

You see, the option of two deaths, that humans have, gives us a built-in advantage that is not only advantageous to us, but also to God, who planned to use our physical death as the centrepiece of a grand demonstration of His love from the very creation of our world.

As you can see, as we come to the culmination of the season of Lent, I have the crucifixion of Christ on my mind. For God demonstrated His love for us in this way – that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8).

Had humans been like the angels, with only a single kind of death that was possible for us (the eternal kind), then for Christ to demonstrate His love for us by sparing us the punishment that we deserved and substituting Himself instead under the judgement of God, God’s Son would have to endure eternal death and be permanently separated from His Father – separating the persons of the Holy Trinity forever – hardly a practical option! But, as we humans are capable of being punished for sin with two kinds of death, Jesus could experience one of them (physical death) and His demonstration would still serve its purpose.

Because Christ’s death successfully demonstrated that God was loving and merciful enough to redeem sinners at tremendous cost, both humans and angels benefited enormously and God is glorified eternally as a direct result.

Humans benefit, because we can be forgiven our sins and be spared from eternal death (a priceless benefit!).

Angels benefit, because only in our redemption could the they observe God, their creator, showing mercy and forgiveness toward sinners without compromising His perfect justice – something they could never have seen had humans never been created, fallen into sin and been redeemed through the atoning sacrifice of God’s Son.

And, finally God benefits, so to speak, because, as the result of what the crucified and risen Christ has done, both humans and angels join together to give Him endless praise for the perfect combination of righteousness and grace that the redemption of humanity displays.

St. Paul wrote, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Romans 3.23-26).

Consider an historic bottle of brandy. It could be kept "eternally" in a museum or it could "die" by having its cork removed and its contents poured out. Yet, how foolish it would be for that bottle to resent it's "death". It was obviously designed to have its cork removed and its contents poured out. Even after its first "death", the brandy bottle would not have to have a second death (be trashed). It could live forever in someone's prized bottle collection. God seems to have designed us well to serve the purpose of His glory.

As I've said before, God created us, knowing that we would fall into sin and that, "from the foundation of the world", His Son would be offered as the Lamb whose sacrifice would make our pardon possible. This is how God's designing humans with a "double death feature" comes into its own.

Seeing physical death this way almost rehabilitates it, or at least recognizes that human physical death serves a higher purpose by showcasing the surpassing love of God.

Elemental, my dear apologist

2007-10-31T12:33:00.000-04:00

Speaking of nature - in Psalm 19 - the Bible says "there is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard..." Is nature "telling the glory of God" on a molecular level? Jesus recalled the vivid image of speaking stones in Habakkuk 2.11, when he said the "stones would cry out" in praise of God, if man kept silent (Luke 19.41). To give the elements of the universe their God-given voice, I publish the following from Ted Naumann:

The Periodic Table

500 billion galaxies, each containing 100s of millions of solar systems is believed to have come from a minuscule "singularity". Did this singularity have an inherent periodic table within its mass?

Some believers in the "big bang" would say yes. If true, it would follow that each and every one of 107 potential atoms were already contained within that singularity. The quarks within the atomic nuclei would provide the attributes which would later determine what each potential atom will become.

Other big bang adherents may say that it is absurd to attribute any form of organized matter within the extremely dense mass of the singularity. Atomic structures would have to be formed during or after the big bang.

Either way, the existence of a periodic table poses some interesting conclusions.

All atoms are capable of combining with one another in order to form molecules which greatly exceed the usefulness of the individual atoms. For example, aluminum when combined with magnesium (which weighs only half as much) changes from a toothpaste tube material into an alloy useful for the wings of a large jetliner.

This ability of atoms to combine into useful molecules is hard to understand because their individual electrons are so active. Electrons revolve around their proton at more than 100 million billion times per second. It's tough enough to see how they avoid colliding with one another when circling their own nucleus, let alone when forced into combining with another atom (with its own electrons) to make a molecule. When several different atoms are combined into a molecule, the electrons of each atom often cross paths with electrons of other atoms and do it without colliding.

The hydrogen atom is unique. It is the most abundant element in the universe, yet a free hydrogen atom is almost never found on earth. It's the lightest of all elements (with only one electron), and it has combined naturally with oxygen (which has 8 electrons) to make H²O the most abundant molecule in the world, (covering 3/4 of the earth's surface) and one that is essential to all of life. The human body consists of 60% water. This third phenomenon brings us back to the periodic table. We are forced to ask one ultimate question, the answer to which will form a world view. But first, let's take a closer look at the periodic table.

The 107 natural elements are grouped by their characteristics into categories. Metals are an important category. They not only provide the material for most structures, but some like iron, have useful functions in the human body.

Iron (Fe) is the fourth most abundant element on earth. Significant quantities also have been found in meteorites. It is the main ingredient in steel and several hundred thousand tons of it are required to make one large naval vessel or cruise ship. Although a large number of them have gone to the bottom of the sea over the years; there is no danger of an iron shortage. It is obvious that iron ought to have been one of the most abundant elements in the periodic table.

Gases comprise another important category in the periodic table. The most important gas is oxygen (O) and it happens to be the most abundant element on earth. We have said that hydrogen gas is almost never found naturally on earth outside of the water molecule, yet there are twice as many hydrogen atoms than oxygen atoms in water. Oxygen makes up about half of everything on our planet and comprises 2/3 of the human body. Although It is continuously being consumed by people and animals, it is marvelously restored into the air by plants.

One of the atoms in the metal category is relatively rare and somehow there is little use for it anyway except for jewelry and dental work and, oh yes, money. The value of gold is almost entirely arbitrary since ceramics have become the material of choice for dental work. Our society could get along very well without it.

Aluminum is an extremely useful metallic atom. It doesn't corrode like iron and therefore is useful for weather sheathing, window frames and beer cans. When combined with magnesium, it becomes stronger than any other molecule of similar weight. Cars made of it become more fuel efficient, and airplanes of that alloy can carry heavier loads. As the most conductive of all metals, it has numerous electrical uses. Fortuitously the aluminum atom is the most abundant of all metallic elements and the third most abundant element of any kind. Over a million tons of it are produced in the United States every year and more is recycled.

Oil, coal and natural gas, those complex hydrocarbon compounds, have become essential for the survival of industrial nations. Highway pavements, massive amounts of fuels, scores of synthetics, all require it. Oil is abundant, but retrieving it is often limited by wars, environmentalists and the high cost of drilling. Large quantities are found in places where you would least expect it - under vast deserts, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Slope of Alaska. It is plentiful all over the USA, South and Central America, etc. Yes, oil is abundant, but then it has to be.

The source of oil is a major speculation into which this article will not engage. We simply included it as another example of a type of matter which was made in great abundance apparently by dame fortune.

There aren't enough rubber trees in the world to supply the need for auto, plane and truck tires, flexible tubing, etc. But by polymerization of organic compounds, tires are being made from sugar cane and other sugar sources. There are more than 2 million carbon (organic) compounds useful for nylon, polyester, plastics, synthetic rubber, etc. in an almost unlimited supply because they are all made from renewable resources.

Silicon is the world's second most abundant atom. While it appears to be mere sand, it is enormously versatile and useful. It can be made into almost anything: building blocks, cement, semi-conductors, solar batteries, all kinds of glass, micro-electronics, photosensitive plates, and a new ceramic with mechanical strength ranging from 15,000 to 35,000 pounds per square inch and which is being used in the nose cones of spacecraft.

We said in paragraph 4 that the periodic table poses some interesting conclusions. Please note that the underlined conclusions in this article are made tongue-in-cheek. Thoughtful people will realize that the individual elements in the periodic table were made by a super intelligent being and that they were made in just the right quantities to enable an industrialized society to flourish.

Ted Naumann

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In Heaven we will be given the benefit of hindsight - to say nothing of more advanced intelligence than we now have on earth. Perhaps we will have to wait until we talk about it in Heaven to know for sure, but that does not stop Ted Naumann from giving us a fascinating twist on the "anthropic principle".

Does he know something the rest of us don't know?

I thank him for this extraordinary insight. I have not heard the periodic table of elements referred to in any other apologetic. Have any of you out there see this before?

Emails please to tednaumann@aol.com

Re-habilitating King James’ English

2007-05-05T16:45:00.000-04:00

It’s nearly four hundred years old, not always easy to understand, yet more influential than any English translation of the Bible in history – and it is making an unexpected comeback in our lifetime. I’m talking about the “King James Bible” or, as it is called in Britain: “The Authorised Version”.

If you were following its usage over the past twenty-five years (the entire length of my career as a pastor), you would have said that King James’ English was on its way out. The LCMS’s 1982 hymnal systematically removed it, the synodical catechism switched to the “New International Version” as did the synod’s self-study Bible. “Thees and thous” were removed from all prayers and pastors were told that “Elizabethan English” was “no longer American language” (My Country ‘tis of Thee?).

Apart from Shakespeare and a few hymns like “How Great Thou Art”, that were excused from up-dating, “King James English could not talk to the un-churched world”. (I thought the un-churched lacked salvation – not language skills).

For pastors it was a time of crisis – not only was the version of the Bible that we memorized not to be memorized in the future, we could not see an end to the updating of it. One contemporary version followed another in an endless stream, each claiming to be the English standard for the future. Meanwhile we were being made to feel more and more embarrassed by any use of “archaic” and “outmoded” language among us. Yet what was truly embarrassing was the bowdlerizing of classic hymns in a misguided frenzy to update.

Finally (and still in my life-time!) the question of English for today seems to be “panning out”. Among the various indications that I detect of this happening are new recordings and steady sales of the King James Bible and the publication of the Lutheran Service Book with the original English within one of its Divine Services and many classic hymns.

Like the Church of England, which is doing the same thing in the 21^st century, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod has decided to expect Church members to be “bi-lingual” – able to appreciate both the English of King James and contemporary English into the indefinite future. A collective sigh of relief may be heard from English – speaking believers the world over. Finally we have realized that it is “OK” to read the Bible and worship in old English!

Using the old English and understanding it do not always go hand in hand, unfortunately. But this presents the church with an exciting challenge for teaching.

For example, since 1982 users of “Lutheran Worship” have been singing “Holy God, We Praise Your Name”. Now in the LSB they will be going back to the original wording: “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name.”

This means we have to teach people that “thy”, “thee” and “thou” are pronouns that express a precious intimacy not found in modern English pronouns. They are not some “spiritual” form, but rather a “familiar” form, common in European languages, where one uses different pronouns for different people depending on how close you are to them in friendship. Like the German “du”, “thou” means “you – my familiar friend”.

Dr. Paul Grime, executive director of the Synod’s Commission on Worship, says the commission, in preparing LSB, strove to distinguish between archaic and obsolete language. “While we updated words that were hard to understand or which have dropped out of usage,” he says, “we kept others that made sense or which never needed to be changed in the first place.” Thanks be to Thee, O Lord!

Losing at the religion game

2007-04-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

You know, when you are with a group of people - all set to play a danger game - it is not easy to opt out. It is difficult to cope with how you will feel unless, before you opt out of the game, you are really prepared – prepared with what you will say – with a reason you will give for not playing along. And it will be difficult for you unless you are prepared for the ridicule you may get from that group. It is not easy, particularly for young people, when something like that happens.

I wonder how prepared we are for the word that we proclaim to be denounced as folly by those who are perishing. How prepared are we for the rejection of our religious position by those who are prepared to dismiss us as foolish or worse for holding to the historic Christian Gospel and faith?

St. Paul certainly seemed to have prepared himself mentally and in every way for the inevitable negative reception that his religious views would receive by some, if not many of the very people whom he was trying to reach with the saving message about Jesus Christ.

But you might say, I don’t need to concern myself about that for either or both of two reasons: You may say, “people won’t be showing disrespect for my religious beliefs because people just don’t do that nowadays” or you may say, “I won’t get any flack for my religious beliefs because, as a matter of principle, I never discuss them (outside of the church)”.

Well, the first of those statements is naïve and the second is unacceptable – so there – your opinions have been denounced and by your own pastor to boot!

But seriously, as your pastor, I cannot overlook unrealistic or unacceptable opinions on the subject of speaking about Christ, any more than the apostles themselves could. Would I be a loving pastor if I stood idly by while people played “Russian roulette” with human souls?

But you say, “Things are different today”. In our permissive age, the rules of the game have changed. Now people won’t condemn your opinions on religion or anything else. People today will all politely nod in approval and positively affirm whatever position you have as being valid for you”.

Perhaps that is the fashion today, but it only holds true to a point. As soon as you state an opinion that you hold to be true, not just yourself, but for everyone, then you have violated the rules of the game and will soon find that the polite affirmations you expected are replaced by condemnation.

Yes, what has happened is that religion has been reduced from a serious life and death matter to a kind of listening game. I listen to you, you listen to me, but nobody really hears anything.

And, according to the rules of this listening game, you are not allowed to believe in error as well as truth. You are allowed to only speak of what is true for you – how you personally feel etc. nothing beyond that.

As soon as you state that you also believe in error or that some people are wrong, then you are out of the game and the very people who were, at first, willing to listen to you, now will not hesitate to cover their ears because the game is over and, since you have forfeited the game, they no longer have to play along and listen.

People were doing this in Jesus’ day. They were listening but not hearing. And they were treating religion like a game in which they called the shots and they made the rules. To them Jesus said, 15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
16 "But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
17 "'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.'

Don’t be surprised when those who claimed to be so tolerant, suddenly show the limits of their toleration. Paradoxically, they will demonstrate that can tolerate everything but intolerance condemning you as intolerant for believing in the existence of error as well as truth.

Yes, the rules have changed. The new rule is this: People will affirm your religious opinions – as long as you abide by the further rule that you won’t assert that your beliefs actually apply to anyone but yourself. You may speak for yourself, but that’s it. Don’t claim to have access to absolute or universal truth. If you do claim to have the objective truth, then what was politely received from you initially will be denounced as foolish, if not psychopathological.

This is the new “wisdom of the wise” in today’s age of disposable world-views and “drive-by religion”. Yet, however attractive they may seem on the surface, the new rules of religious debate make it even less likely that people who listen to what you have to say about your religious faith will believe it to be true for them, as well as for you, and even less likely to share with you a saving faith in Christ.

For that reason – for the sake of the eternal destiny of human souls - the “wisdom of the wise” , that foolishly reduces religion to a mere game, must be destroyed or at least replaced by the wisdom of God. This is why the apostle Paul tells us,
19 … it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21 for since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom; it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For this reason, you and I must, just as the church herself must preach and unchanging message in the midst of a changing world. Only a changeless Christ can truly serve a changing world. We must proclaim the word of God, Incarnate, the Wisdom from on high, the truth unchanged, unchanging, the light of our dark sky.

Only this lantern to our footsteps shines on from age to age.

Blind and Backward Science in High Definition

2007-02-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

Determined not to pay for television programs as long as there are free ones that can be tuned in with “rabbit ears”, my family recently discovered that there are TV signals that we have never been able to receive until we acquired a high-definition TV.

Among the “new” programs now available to us are nature shows on PBS. In viewing these programs, it didn’t take long to discover that they are permeated with the views of those scientists who insist on ruling out certain scientific facts that seem to point to intelligent design and a Designer.

Blind to how they jeopardize their own claims to be scientific, these biased programs trot out the same old obsolete, incomplete data, and Darwinist mythology, but presented with more impressive computer-generated graphics and animation.

In one documentary, the presenter sat at his computer designing make-believe alien life as it might exist on other planets, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the designer of the life forms that actually do live on our own planet. What a sad abuse of human creativity! In another TV nature show, the only time “religion” was mentioned was when the church of Galileo’s time was criticized for hindering his scientific work.

The Christian Church has “grown up” a lot since Galileo’s time, and our witness should reflect that fact. Thanks to recent scientific discoveries (that the current proprietors of certain television stations won’t show their viewers), Christians can refer people today to many convincing proofs that the universe has been designed – even if that design has been marred by sin and evil since it was originally created.

So, please, as you and I witness, let’s bear these thoughts in mind:

Christians DO NOT accept the argument that “science” has shown life to be nothing more than the result of matter attracted to matter, with energy added to it. We should know that real science has discovered genetics essential to life, based on code that is full of precise information, pointing to intelligent design. Life = matter + energy + information.

Most people accept the reality of this last discovery. So while we are witnessing, we can ask people to consider the question: where did that information came from? Ask too if it is possible that the designer -- who gave such detailed information to proteins that they could form every cell in our bodies -- couldn’t also give information to you and me, describing Himself and how He loves us and has a plan for our lives.

Christians DO NOT accept the argument that the process of “natural selection” explains all animal life. That process may explain some features in an organism, but not the organism itself. Darwin admitted that his theory would break down if an irreducibly complex creature could be found. Since his time, scientists have acknowledged that all creatures are irreducibly complex at many levels. By definition they would not exist at all unless they were fully functional as they are.

Christians CAN be bold in stating that some who claim to be experts in scientific knowledge are not correct about their scientific conclusions. Many times scientists themselves have been misled, especially in institutions of higher education, and have been kept from the truth by those who promote a “god-free” universe.

Golf course or Battlefield - where are you?

2007-01-31T11:24:00.000-05:00

As fans of the award winning television series “House” will be aware, Dr. House, the main character, is a curmudgeonly, blunt, tactless but highly intelligent person and that is part of his appeal - and he always saves the day.

Yet viewers of a recent episode in the current series, built around the issues of rape, abortion and death will see that House is shown to be uncharacteristically at a loss to save the day, unless viewers reckon his “counseling” a frightened rape victim to have an abortion against her conscience was wise.

Singularly unprepared to deal with evil and sin both House and the rape victim (who initially believes in God) talk it out until he confesses that he was also abused in his life and that she should agree with him that all life is meaningless and there is no God (unless he is “unspeakably cruel” ).

People today don’t like to think about sin and evil as though we can delete them just by removing those words from our vocabulary or labeling them as “unenlightened”. We would like to deny they exist. But living in denial of these things only causes more problems than it solves. Sin and evil have to be factored in to the equation or else life does not make sense, or even worse, God (even if you believe in Him) does not make sense.

To illustrate this, let’s say you are on a battlefield, yet you imagine that it is some kind of golf course! You are denying and you are blind to the truth that there is a war going on and you choose instead to see the field before you as provided by a country club. So you go out in your colorful golfing clothes with your bag of clubs and perhaps an electric cart. Just as you are ready to hit your first shot, an incoming mortar shell blasts a big hole right next to you. But still you live in denial and you think this is just how they make those sand traps.

Meanwhile, as you see soldiers running across the field, shouting commands, crying out in pain, guns blazing, you merely curse the inept country club management for allowing such disruptive players on the course.

So you go back to setting up your ball and, just as you take your backswing, you yourself are hit with a bullet. Now you cannot deny that there is a war going on - but it is too late. You are a casualty. Sadly, your last conscious thought will probably be a bitter complaint against whoever made and runs this horrible golf course. What an “unspeakably cruel” golf course manager he must be!

In this way evil and sin destroy people – precisely what the enemy and accuser of humanity wants to happen. For, as God’s word warns us, our enemy, the devil has done this (Matthew 13.24-40). He is roaming around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5.8). As one hymn puts it, “The World Is Very Evil”.

Instead of being ignorant of the facts or even denying the facts, Christians are to be aware of the battlefield we are in as it really is. Ever since sin entered the world through human disobedience, evil has been waging war against us just as the devil, a fallen angel who sinned, has been waging a war against God, invisible to our eyes though that warfare may be.

The world may deny that sin exists, but we Christians should know better than that, lest we be like that foolish man on the battlefield who thought it was a golf course or Dr. House and his unfortunate client, for whom abortion will only add a further burden to her already ravaged life.

Far better to know the full picture as God reveals it. He tells us that sin and evil exist and He warns us of their power in this fallen world. At the same time, by sending his Son Jesus Christ to “take the bullet for us” when He was crucified and died for our sins, God shows us how He loves us and has provided a way by which sin may be faced and forgiven through trust in Christ as Savior.

People would not have to live in denial if they knew that sin, death and the devil had been convincingly conquered by One Who died and rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, from whence He came, offering us a share in His victory and everlasting life as well, in an eternity free from evil.

God's language skills

2006-09-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

One of the main assumptions of "religious studies" is that God has little or no language skills. With all the contradictory, mutually exclusive religious “truths” and “faith stories” that are part of human experience, if He/she/it exists at all, “God” is not as good as humans are at getting a message across – a profoundly insulting and archaic assessment of the facts.

With the discovery of DNA modern science now knows that amino acids in living things don't organize themselves, but follow the orders given by means of genetic information.

Scientist and Author Dean Kenyon formerly thought in terms of mindless forces of attraction driving amino acids to form protean shapes constructed into the tiny machines we see functioning within living cells. He and all other scientists have now renounced "Chemical Predestination" and now know that the many various types of amino acids are like letters of the alphabet. Their sequences determine communication. Astoundingly, it would take many large volumes to contain that information used by even the simplest one-celled living thing.

An “information-rich system” such as we see in living things suggests both language and the Intelligence that is responsible for language. The evidence literally “speaks for itself”!

Yet many a lecturer in religious studies implies that God doesn’t have the language skills or the interest in human beings to get a clear message to us. Instead God has left human beings, the most complex objects in the universe and His crowning achievement in creation, to fumble about with the cerebral “wiring” to contemplate God, but no reliable information nor anything that is absolutely true.

Would God have made us as we are but failed to tell us the truth about Himself? Is it even logical that God would fail to give us the evidence we need to decide which of the innumerable religious claims out there is really the true one? Is it wrong to assume that a God who claims to love us would actually speak the truth to us?

Some biased scientists may look at DNA and refuse to see Intelligent Design - in fact ceasing to be scientists – but what is the religious studies teacher’s excuse for not seeing that God has spoken in love and revealed His truth to His human creation?

As they “compare” religions, don’t they see the huge “spike” in the data when they come to Judeo-Christianity? How can they see the historical basis of the biblical Faith and then refuse to distinguish it from all the myth-based religions? How can they teach that all religions are human-based and very much the same, when the message of the Bible has features in it which put it in an entirely different category from all other religions?

How can they accuse God of failing to offer His truth distinctly and unmistakably and unambiguously – when they know how unique on the religious horizon Jesus Christ is?

They are either:
A. Ignorant of the unique spike that Christianity makes amid all the religious data they have.
Or
B. They are deliberately concealing the spike in order to spare the feelings of people of other religions with whom they want to live in harmony.

If you are ignorant of the facts, then do your homework and you will see that it is simply inaccurate and wrong to place all religions on the same level of credibility. Myth and history are not interchangeable. Truth and feelings are not the same thing. Also consider that human beings are created with an eternal soul – and the destiny of their souls is at stake.

If you are covering up the truth – sacrificing it on the altar of human feelings – then you should know that you are not doing any favors for the human beings involved. God revealed His truth for a reason. He intervened in human history at great cost to Himself because He loves us and He knows that He must banish from His presence forever, those who do not receive His offer of mercy and forgiveness and are left in their sins, contaminated and condemned.

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”— NIV John 1:12
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son”. NIV John 3:18

There is far more at stake in religious studies than many are prepared to admit.

'Be holy... Be perfect...' impossible expectation or Gospel promise.

2006-08-26T11:29:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I'm not the only Lutheran who has been taught that as we witness to unbelievers we should use Bible verses such as 'Be holy as I the Lord Your God am holy' and 'Be perfect, as Your Father in Heaven is Perfect' as 'law' designed to intimidate people into humility and repentance. (Then we can tell them the Gospel - "so they don't have to work at being holy" ?!).

Yet to take such verses out of context and teach that such statements are made by God just to cripple human spiritual ambition with an impossible standard is to fail to see the real meaning in those words, not to mention missing any real Gospel glory in them.

In His redeeming grace and mercy, God has provided for us to be both holy and perfect and, indeed, such holiness is already the gift of God to those in whom His Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple, surely.

Furthermore, those who teach that such statements are intended to assert the unattainable heights of divine perfection are reducing God to the level of a bully who towers over a small child and flaunts his superior height.

Lets stop using these statements as proof-texts for law, and start showing people the heights of undeserved privilege that God is offering to share with us with the words 'Be holy, as I the Lord your God am Holy'.

They describe the exaltation of those in whom God's Holy Spirit dwells as in a Temple. 'Be perfect, as Your Father in Heaven is Perfect' are words of promise to those who, through faith in Christ, have a righteousness imputed to them that exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees and a standing with God that is variously described as sonship and royal priesthood - a holy nation. *

*See Exodus 19.6, Leviticus 20.26, 1 Corinthians 6.19, 1 Peter 1.14-16 & 2.9,

“What kind of god am I?”

2006-08-24T12:36:00.000-04:00

Blame it on "post-modernism" or "relativism", but being your own god is more popular than ever.

My question is, "why are people who insist on making it up as they go along so blind to the absurdity?"

If you could be both the examiner as well as the student, you would have a sure way to pass every test: ‘make up your own answers’. You get to pass every exam! But what kind of an academic exercise would that be?

If you are a musician in an orchestra, but you decide that ‘the right notes are the note I say are right’ you get to play any notes you want! But what kind of harmony would you produce?

If you are a mathematician, but you decide that ‘the right answer is the number I choose’, your equations are never wrong! But would the sums add up?

Despite the absurdity of it – there is a popular school of thought that says, ‘there are no right answers, but the answers I cook up’. Only what is ‘true for me’ is ‘true’. The ultimate judge of ‘right and wrong’ is me. You get to take the place of God! But what kind of god would you be?

Have you fallen into this absurd trap? It is possible to find out. Just ask yourself, “Do I ask ‘what is right’ – or do I ask ‘how am I going to define “right” in this situation’?”

If you are an ‘ethical person’ – a ‘moral person’ – in the classic sense, you would look for the answer in authoritative sources as well as your own conscience.

If you have fallen into the popular trap, adrift, with no anchorage, no absolutes and effectively no God but oneself and no authoritative sources but human opinions and your own conscience, you personalize or privatize ultimate questions and conclude that ‘only what is right to me is right’.

Pontius Pilate’s infamous question was ‘what is truth?’. Have you ended up with Pilate as your role model? Do we ask ‘what is “right”?’ and assume that question has no ultimate answer?

Double incentive for fighting evil

2006-07-25T22:13:00.000-04:00

Fighting evil is both defensive as well as offensive.

As someone who is not aggressive by nature, much pious exhortation to 'fight' this or that evil within and without leaves me rather cold. What *will* put the sword in my hand, however is the realization that I should fight, not for the sake of fighting, but to defend the Holy Temple that the Holy Spirit has made of me when He came to dwell in me at my baptism. I need the double incentive of defense as well as offence, if I am to be a real fighter against evil. In this respect I am working in partnership with my guardian angel.

If a Christian gets injured or dies, has their guardian angel failed in his duty? Thoughtless persons may say 'yes', or even deny the existence of such angels. Yet, if one considers that the primary thing being guarded by an angel is not physical but spiritual, the proper perspective is gained. Yes, angels may guard the physical body (and do, lest we “dash our foot against a stone” Psalm 91.12), but just as important as “bearing us up in their hands” physically, an angel guards the Holy Temple that the Christian’s body is from spiritual threats to it. Threats that cause the Holy Spirit’s temple to be desecrated and/or defiled are as serious or more serious than any physical ones.

Evil is ultimately defeated by the forgiveness that is ours through faith in Christ. When a Christian dies in the Faith, even if violently, but enters Heaven through death, then a guardian angel can rejoice that, in that individual’s case, his work has still been a success

"Evil and Good" or "Tension and Relief"?

2006-07-15T09:22:00.000-04:00

Socrates was recently quoted by a blogger to say that "good and evil are oddly united, because the pain he felt at having shackles on his feet was turned to pleasure when they were removed". If Socrates really put things in those terms, he was inviting confusion by associating the distinction between tension and relief (shackles and liberation in his case) with the duality of good and evil that are only features of a world fallen into sin.

There is no sin in the duality of tension and relief. What I mean is that, apparently, part of the matrix of *all reality* is this duality.

For example, reconciliation as the resolution of conflict is part of that duality. Easily recognizable as dynamics in both Theodicy and Soteriology, the duality of tension and relief takes on amazing importance as part of the biblical revelation of the person of God Himself. To the extent that God makes tension and relief part of His experience, and that of his incorporeal creation, this duality embraces both the spiritual as well as the material, the eternal as well as the temporal. As such, we are talking about a truly significant dynamic, perhaps unique in the universe for its all-pervasive involvement in everything that exists (including God!).

Tension and relief (T&R) is intrinsic to all of the most useful, creative and pleasurable experiences that exist. T&R is part of the creation of the universe before and after the Fall. Before God could conclude “it was good”, He had to tell us that the material world was “without form and void” (Genesis 1.2). The “tension” of an unfinished canvas or an un-carved block of marble characterized the world before God relieved that tension by forming “out of the ground” every living thing.

Most problematic for some is the fact that T&R always involves “discomfort” followed by “comfort”. Yet this is a rhythm of life for which we can and should praise God. There is discomfort in hunger and thirst, yet what would the gourmet be without both such “discomforts”? Who enjoys the food the most, even at the lamest restaurant, but the diner who hasn’t eaten all day? What is more delightful to look at than the “sight for sore eyes?”

Try enjoying a good night’s sleep when you are not in the least bit tired.

When God allows conflict, crisis, need, and passion it is all for the purpose of making the resolution of those tensions the more sweet and meaningful. Experiencing a T&R cycle can form mental associations that illustrate some of the most transcendent realities in our existence. This is admittedly part of the appeal of various philosophical explorations and interpretations of desire.

But, unlike Buddhism, the biblical solution for “suffering” is not the extinction of all desire, but the satisfaction of it. “and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8.23). The experience of Jesus Christ was shot full of T&R. Without T&R, he would not have cursed a fig tree when it had no fruit for him. Without T&R, Christ would not have “for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross” (Hebrews 12.2).

Will the afterlife include T&R? Apparently so, if we are going to be like Jesus. According to St. John, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3.2, emphasis mine).

Life without T&R (at least in this world) would be characterized by solutions without problems, achievements without challenges and products that appear without development or the rigors of the creative process. It would not be life as we know it, nor as we (or God) would want it. It would be like the human race living in harmony with God, but without any choice in the matter. What would be at stake would be more than the cliché “no pain, no gain”, but without T&R, the very realization of free will and the existence of true love would cease to exist.

Still the question may be asked, “Could not the sort of satisfaction we associate with ‘relief’ be enjoyed without the element of ‘tension’?” Yet, that question is like the question of whether we could appreciate the sort of experience we call “color” if we did not have “light”. Remove light and you have a uniform and not unpleasant experience (especially if you are tired), but you do not have color, and you live in darkness. Remove tension and you have a not unpleasant experience, but you have no climactic highs or thrills of achievement, only consistent and predictable sensations that could not be truly described as “satisfactory”, let alone excellent.

Human salvation - God's love demonstrated to angels

2006-07-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I expounded on Job 38 in my sermon, commenting about the verse referring to the angels’ happiness as they witnessed the creation of our world.

Part of Christian faith is recognition of the cosmic scope of GOD'S eternal love. God asked Job the haunting question, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? ...when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (v.7)

To that question we are left breathless. We have no answer because we were not there. But we are told who was there. God tells us who sang for joy to see our world created – it was His heavenly host, the “morning stars”, the “sons of God”, His holy angels!

Those same angels are watching the unfolding of our lives and the working out of God’s plan to save us through the sacrifice of His Son, ever since we were created. St. Peter tells us that “angels long to look into these things” (1 Peter 1.12).

For our salvation is “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the angelic authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:9-11).

Scripture gives us plenty of glimpses of angels worshipping God in Heaven. But how often do we note that the worship which angels render to God is related to, among other things, their knowledge of the history of human salvation? It is ultimately the only salvation they have ever seen, for no salvation was offered to any angel who sinned. Yet, although it is about the rescue from eternal damnation of another species (humanity), human salvation is a tremendous source of delight to the angels. Even the founding of the material universe itself made the angels shout for joy (Job 38.7).

The angels’ joy at the beginning of our world possibly suggests that the whole material universe was made as a demonstration to them of His love. (A “Grand Demonstration”, as Dr.Jay Adams called it).

‘…The Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world’ knew He would have do die to give eternal life to sinners even before the Fall into sin. Knowing before He created the earth that He would have to die, why else did He proceed? The angels may hold the answer to this frequently asked question.

Witnessing human salvation, the angels were able to see, as they could not see in any other way, how the same just God who punished their rebel colleagues is also a merciful God who saves sinful creatures even at the cost of the sacrificial death of His unique Son. Following this reasoning, it is easy to understand why ‘there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents’ (Luke 15.10).

The Pure and Ancient Stream

2006-07-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

I am listening to an Internet streaming audio service called "Ancient Faith". It is Eastern Orthodox in origin, and, as I listen to the music I am aware of how alien the melodies often are. Yet, at the same time, I taste the familiar flavours of my own faith. I do not mean the "Lutheran faith", but something much more ancient, yet pure, coming from the pre-reformation faith that goes back to biblical times.

I am sure that is the effect that "Ancient Faith" radio is trying to achieve. But all contrivances aside, it is worth thinking about that we "orthodox" Christians can taste the flavour of the water when we hear it, if there is any trace of it in the stream from which we "drink".

Jesus said, "my sheep hear my voice and they follow me". "they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice" (John 10.5.

There is "worship music" that I will run away from - as anyone who really knows me will attest. (Even at District functions, I blush to admit, I have to leave the room when THAT sort of music comes on). Yet, it is not the fact that such sounds are "not Lutheran" (although often they are not). It is that they do not taste right to me.

If you are thinking that I am giving way to subjectivity here and its really just "a matter of taste", you misunderstand. I do not claim it is objectively demonstrable, yet I insist it is more than mere subjectivism when I say that the water from the pure and ancient stream has a detectable flavour.

Just as pollutants may also be detected occasionally, so the pure thing can also be detected by the soul. So, at the very least, please give me credit for not being biased in favour of only one kind of worship music. Nor should it be said of me that I am trapped in one particular culture or something (i.e. German).

Its just that I can taste it when I am getting the pure stuff or some lame musical counterpart to “junk food”. Bon appetite!

Engelein - "Ach, Herr, lass deine lieben Engelein..."

2006-07-07T10:18:00.000-04:00

This weblog gets its name from the original German text of the Lutheran chorale, "Lord, Thee I love with all my heart". The English translations found in various Lutheran hymnals fail to depict the angel as described in the original German.

Of course, the translation, "Lord, let at last Thine angel come, to Abraham's bosom bear me home" is tremendous and fine as far as it goes. But lost is the original German's sweet imagery of a "lieben Engelein", literally a "dear little angel".

As someone who, for some unknown reason, has pictured my guardian angel as both "dear" and "little", I was pleasantly surprised to look at the original German text of my favourite hymn. In those words I could see the vision to which my mind has gone for many years and it is a delightful vision.

Perhaps the original image was thought to be too sentimental with its description of an angel resembling a baroque more than a biblical cherub. I don't know. Ultimately one must admit that the Bible says very little about guardian angels. Yet it does not rule out the vision so dear to me and apparently to Martin Schalling when, in around 1567, he wrote those words, "Ach, Herr, lass dein' lieb' Engelein am lezten End' die Seele mein in Abrahams Schoss tragen!"

My translation? "to where Abraham is - ah! Lord, let your dear little angel finally take my soul..." And there, in Paradise, one will possess what "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Corinthians 2:9.