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The Joy of Faith Exercised

'Surprised by Joy' is the title of one of C.S.Lewis' books in which he describes how his faith was exercised by the death of his wife, Joy.

Joy is not something that people naturally expect to be associated with suffering.  For Christians, however, it is different; because, when suffering affects believers, there is, in the midst of it all an exercise of faith.  And there is joy in that exertion.  It is a bitter-sweet joy, but it is a joy nevertheless.  Perhaps it is a joy that only believers can know.  It is the profession of the faithful that, if we feel joy in the midst of pain, it is because '...the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’ (2 Corinthians 4.7).

The apostle St.Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians contains great wisdom for us as we ‘groan’ over the troubles of life. He knew all about troubles! He writes, ‘We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body’.

In these times of ease and convenience we don’t like hardship. When difficulties present themselves, rather than rise to the occasion as believers, we act like spoiled children who cannot put things in perspective and fall to pieces rather that react like people who trust God.

In our affluent world we are particularly vulnerable to reacting badly to hardship. We are challenged by the example of St. Paul, who saw hardship as part and parcel of life on earth. The outward circumstances of life in which ‘stuff happens’ combined with his own physical limitations did not deter him from praising God and seeing a divine purpose working itself out in his life, nevertheless.

‘We have this treasure in clay jars, so that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’, he wrote. The weaker he felt, the more the apostle saw the strength of God and His grace being sufficient and, indeed ‘perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor. 12.9). So what, if God said no to his prayers, that the ‘thorn in his flesh’ be taken away?  He would live with it, if that was God’s will, and even ‘rejoice’ at the exercise of faith that was involved.

He offers us comfort when he writes, ‘though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands’ (2 Cor. 4.16-5.1).

Deferred glory and deferred comfort was worth celebrating for St. Paul and should be for us, too. We fix our eyes on the glory that awaits us beyond this life, just as Jesus fixed His eyes on the accomplishment of our redemption. ‘For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross’ (Heb. 12.2).

After all, we are all beneficiaries of the suffering of Jesus that accomplished the forgiveness of all our sin and opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

As Christ is risen and has re-assumed His glory, so He promises that He goes to prepare a place for us who trust in Him, in a glorious world to come.

‘Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling’, and God expects us to be ok with that. The glory is coming.

The Box

Just before my birthday this year, I came home to find a box sitting on a ledge on one side of the front porch.  It contained some presents from my parents and they had written a smiley face on every side of the box.  As I picked it off the ledge to bring into the house, the thought occurred to me; this box could easily have fallen off the ledge and perhaps never been found.  It could have languished outside, smiley faces and all, and its intended purpose would have been in vain.  How sad that would have been!

But because I brought it inside, it was safe and my parents hopes for it were realized when I opened it up and cherished its contents.  I should also add that I kept the box, too, as a reminder of the hopes that God our heavenly Father has that we will benefit from the gift that He has given us in the form of the forgiveness of our sins and the ongoing communion with Him that is the supreme ‘gift that keeps on giving’.

Sadly, however, many today, who have also been redeemed by the blood of God’s Son, so that they could enjoy the gift of everlasting fellowship with Him,  leave this gift neglected outside of their lives like that gift box left outside of my home.   They may have noticed it in passing, but thought to themselves that they would deal with it at some later date.  They leave God’s gift outside,  in all weathers, ignoring His hopes, His smiles, and risking the loss of that gift altogether when the time comes when it is too late to retrieve it from its precarious position on a ledge somewhere outside of their lives.  ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’, Jesus says to all whom He has redeemed  (Rev. 3.20).  

God’s gift of fellowship with Him, Communion and Participation in His life is not a one-time thing, like a box that we open once and then discard.   Partaking of eternal life is something that God is ever-hopeful that we will continue to do throughout our earthly lives and forever after.  In that way we will not only be ‘saved’, but safe.

By all means, ‘open the box’, but do not throw away the box.  Yes, you have been ‘saved’ by God, but you must take steps to keep the faith that God has given you by His grace.  He has called and enlightened you, just as Luther says ‘he called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true’.

And that which keeps us all in the one true faith is participation, fellowship (koinonia) with God that comes with a living connection to the life of Christ, by His word, His sacraments and His Church.   The Church is the context in which God ‘forgives daily and richly all sins’.   ‘Be all be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure’,  writes St. Peter  (2 Peter 1.10).  Don’t leave the box on the porch.  Take it in to your life for only then will you fully enjoy its contents and only in ongoing fellowship with God will His hopes and investment in you be realized.

'the Resurrection of the Body'

Easter is a time when we marvel at the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  One of the most reliably documented and established facts of history, the miracle of life returning to the crucified, dead and buried body of Jesus is not just an astonishing phenomenon in itself, but a source of great comfort to all believers.   This is because of the connection between Jesus’ bodily resurrection and our own.

‘Because I live, you will live also’, Jesus promised (John 14.19).  And His apostle, St. Paul, in his writings explains how this affects us, even after physical death.
Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul said, ‘in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ’  (1 Corinthians 15.20-23).

By calling the resurrection of Jesus the firstfruit of our resurrection, St. Paul taught that since the bodily resurrection of Jesus took place we can expect our own bodily resurrection to follow, for we belong to Him.  The term firstfruit refers to the Old Testament practice of offering to God the ‘firstfruit’ of their crops, a sheaf of grain to represent and anticipate the rest of the harvest (Leviticus 23:9-14).

Referring to the sacrament of baptism, that unites all believers to Jesus, St. Paul’s assertion was this:  ‘For if (through baptism) we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (Romans 6:5).

St. John’s reasoning is similar: ‘Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is’  (1 John 3.2).

In the Apostles’ Creed, when we confess our faith ‘in the resurrection of the body’, it is the belief in the future of our own bodies to which we refer.
This resurrection of (every)body is promised on the last Day – the Judgment Day.  Both those who are banished to hell on that day and those who will spend eternity in Heaven receive their bodies back.  Although their bodies may have been reduced to dust after centuries of decomposition, the Bible says,  ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt’  (Daniel 12.2).

A resurrection of human bodies is not, strictly speaking, necessary.  God’s angels have a complete existence without bodies.  Also, in Luke 16,  Jesus revealed that the souls of the dead even have sensations without bodies. Nevertheless, a bodily existence is what God designed human beings to have, and have them we shall.

If the judgment Day occurs during our earthly lives we will not need a bodily resurrection, but we will need to be changed and God will change us to be like the resurrected Jesus. ‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,  in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’.

The Thrill of Participation

Probably second only to the sadness of unrequited love is the depressing feeling of being left out of a pleasurable shared experience.  Others get to enjoy it – you are left out;  what could be worse than that!  It is a kind of ‘Hell on earth’ to miss out in that way. Contrast that difference between the sadness of being excluded and the thrill of full participation in something wonderful and you will have touched upon a key insight in Christian belief.

God’s Word describes some ‘entering into the joy of your Lord’ and others being ‘cast into outer darkness… (where) there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matt. 25.23-30), This applies to more than the end of the world or Judgement Day.  It also describes the difference between participating in the life of the Body of Christ and not participating.

By the ‘thrill of participation’, I do not refer to merely attending church activities – even the Divine Service.  People can attend things, but still be left out of the true benefit of the activity.  True ‘participation’ has to do with the original meaning of the word.  ‘Participation’ is but one of several shades of meaning of the single Greek word: Koinonia.  Other meanings of that word are ‘sharing’, ‘fellowship’ and ‘communion’.

The thrill of Koinonia belongs to those who, not only show up and ‘walk’ with other people, but who – above all - walk with the Lord in repentance and in favour with God and men. ‘…if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’  (1 John 1.7).

Talk to sportsmen and they will make a distinction between simply being ‘in the game’ and being ‘in the zone’!  Being in the zone means ‘You have total focus. Your performance is effortless. You are in synch within yourself, and you display total dominance in whatever you are pursuing’.   There is nothing hypocritical, superficial or perfunctory about being ‘in the zone’.  And the result is thrilling.

That is what God intends Communion to be.  Fellowship with Him is supposed to be full integration into His life.  Those who are ‘double-minded’ - who try to ‘serve both God and Mammon’; for example, will not know the thrill of participation.  They may show up, but their spiritual walk will be hindered by the weight of un-repented sin.  Far better to ‘lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith’  (Hebrews 12.1-2),

Being in Communion starts with ‘going to Communion’, but does not end there with the forgiveness of sin.  ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it?’  (Romans 6:2).  No, communion does not end with God’s forgiveness; it BEGINS with God’s forgiveness.  It continues with a discipline to forsake sin and follow Christ who leads us in ‘the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake’ (Psalm 23).

‘Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.   For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved’  (2 Corinthians 2:14-15).

Remember the comparison I make between the Christian life and soaring in a glider.  Don’t let divided loyalty to God force you to hit the ground.  Remain aloft by His grace.  Live every moment ‘prayerfully’.  ‘Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:22-24).  Taste the thrill of full participation, full communion and koinonia and you will not look back.

Taking your meds?

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 they will eventually become spiritually ill and reject the Spirit of God and the new life that was given to them to provide eternal life.

Now they did not have organ transplants and immunosuppressant drugs back in New Testament times.  But they did have to eat.  And so Jesus used the urgency of nutrition to make His point.

‘here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die (Jesus said). ⁵¹ I am 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 of the world."

 ⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

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

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

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

 ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my 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 organ rejection?  Without the transplant patient eating the anti-rejection drugs, a vital organ transplanted into a body may not remain in the body – and the results would be death.   You can see the urgency in taking those meds.

The tone 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 the Holy Spirit came upon each of us when we were at the font, becoming baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It was there that the Holy Spirit entered into our hearts, creating within us saving faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to purchase that new life for us with His blood.

The baptism of John the Baptiser differed from the baptism of Jesus in that John's baptism brought the newly baptized to look forward to the Messiah who was to come and bring about total forgiveness by what He would later accomplish.

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

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

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

'To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy-- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

What Gets Your Juices Going as a Christian?

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

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

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

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

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?

'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?

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

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

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

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?

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?

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"


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