Tag Apologetics

Your Family is More Important Than Your Furniture – Songs of Ascent #4

Todd R 2 Comments

A prominent feature of the culture I live in is the demand that everyone must respect the “individualism” of everyone else.  Pressure to affirm whatever anyone else wants affirmed about them has ballooned all over the news, social media, corporate policy, and even in churches.  There’s an assumption built into this, which is that the sincere ability to love someone can be the result of someone else threatening us to do it.  Exert enough legal, social, cultural, or even physical pressure and someone’s fundamental nature can be changed by coercion.  The coal turns into a diamond.

Tomorrow is Sunday, so today we return to the Songs of Ascent, a liturgy used in ancient Israel to prepare for worship at the annual festivals in Jerusalem.  What does this have to do with the last paragraph?  In Psalm 120, the first Song of Ascent, we read (post here) that no matter where we live, or where we come from, no matter our genealogy, we live among people with “lying lips” who can’t get along with each other.  In Psalm 121, we are encouraged to find the answer outside of our current place:

“A Song of Ascents.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
            From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
            who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
            he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
            will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;
            the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
            nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;
            he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
            your going out and your coming in
            from this time forth and forevermore.”

The Psalm asks us to take our eyes off of the world around us and look upward for our hope.  Not just talk about the idea of it, but to actually do it.  To turn off the outside world and its circumstances and seek God’s help.  It takes effort because the idea that we can solve our own problems is so powerful.  The fall of Adam and Eve was driven by a curiosity that there may be a better system than the one they already had.  In a literally perfect society, they wanted something else.  If we aren’t intentional about avoiding this trap, it’s easy to not realize we are in it.

We’re All Messed Up
I’ve written much about Tyler Joseph, the songwriter of the band twenty øne piløts, and his campaign to create music and stories that help people deal with mental illness.  In an interview years ago, the interviewer criticized Tyler for calling himself “messed up.”  Was Tyler being too hard on himself?  This was Tyler’s response:

“I know I’m messed up. I think to myself I should be able to control myself.  I look at a lamp and I decide that I’m going to stand up and not hit that lamp. Why can’t I make decisions like that about everything in life. I’m not going to get angry at my brother. I want to be the best brother. Why can’t I do what I want to do? That’s messed up. Something is broken in the way we live. It’s proof that something is not right.”

Tyler is explaining Romans 7:13-21, especially verses 15 and 21, but in a way that’s as plain as day to anyone being honest with themselves.  Romans 7:15 and 21 say: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  And “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”

What if the problem with every person individually is that they are unable, no matter how much external pressure is put on them, to treat other individuals the way they should be treated? If true, it puts the first paragraph into an entirely different light.

In this exact moment as I write this, I’m being very careful not to spill my drink on my laptop.  I have no desire to do anything violent to the couch I’m sitting on but just to enjoy having a place to sit.  If I stop writing to check something on my phone, I make sure I put it down gently in a spot where it won’t fall off and hit the floor.  But at the same time, I know I don’t always treat people with the same respect.  I know if I’m interrupted in the middle of what I think is a great thought or phrase I could get irritated and rude.  Not always, but I could.  I know I could be a better son, husband, father, employee, and friend.  So why don’t I?

Why do we treat our furniture better than our family, even in a culture that increasingly demands with all its strength that we prioritize every individual?  Because we are broken in a way that no political or economic system, no culture or tradition, can fix.  One may be better or worse than another, but none of them has the power to solve the real problem that we can’t consistently love people more than we love our furniture.  We have to go somewhere else to find the answer.

Therefore,
“I lift up my eyes to the hills.
            From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
            who made heaven and earth.”

As pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem, the Israelites were telling a story by making the effort to move.  A story that the towns they leave behind – no matter where they are coming from – don’t have the answer to their most important problems.  On the long journey, they travelled in large groups and slowly, sometimes by foot.  They probably had constant reminders of their own inability to treat the family they traveled with better than whatever furniture or baggage they brought along for the trip. While togetherness is sometimes uncomfortable, together we must lift up our eyes and look for the answer outside of everything we know.

We’re broken and can’t fix ourselves, but “The LORD will keep you from all evil; He will keep your life.”  Take some time out of your week and each day to look up to the hills and seek Him.  To set aside everything else.  To focus on the LORD, because He alone loves us in the way we need to be loved and can help us love others the way they need to be loved.  He won’t seek to break you to make you do it, but He Himself was broken to provide us a way.

Faith: A Practical, Living Teacher

Todd R 3 Comments
Photo by Thomas Somme on Unsplash

Years ago, I saw a drawing of a child suspended in the air, clutching the string of a single balloon, with the caption: “Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to.”  It was a very simple picture, but it made me think: Where does this kind of faith come from?  A faith that turns intellectual trust into action, especially potentially dangerous action?

One way is that we can learn it from others.  I’ve read a lot of Christian apologetics – or writings in defense of Christian faith.  Writers such as Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias were held in reverent awe by many in my college years, the logic being that “if someone that smart can be a Christian, it must be reasonable to believe!”  While there is definitely value in learning from others, there is also the hazard of learning to trust our teachers (instead of our Teacher).  Then when they fall, it hurts us personally and can damage our witness.  We know what ended up happening to Ravi Zacharias[1].

There is also the testimony of the Bible.  In the book of Hebrews, chapter 11 chronicles the faith of many in the Bible, and Hebrews 12:1 calls these our “cloud of witnesses.”  We can learn a lot from these people, but they don’t just teach us facts about God.  The writer of Hebrews adds that because of these witnesses, we should “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, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”[2] He is our Lord, and these witnesses tell us to follow Him, not just be able to describe Him.

One of the best lessons on this comes from G.K. Chesterton, who is well-known for his arguments in defense of the reasonableness of Christianity.  However, near the end of his book Orthodoxy, he says that he has a better idea: “And that is this: ‘that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me tomorrow.’”  Apologetics is not about winning arguments, but about growing our ability to trust Him and learning to explain that to others.

While we can learn from others and from the Bible to build up our faith, what God has done for us personally is the best testimony because it is the most real to us.  Everything else is hearsay, as they say in court.  We are all learning to let Him tell us where to go and what to do.  To discern not only His truth, but His will, in the testimony of modern apologists and in the Bible.  To make our own Ebenezers, or memorials to His faithfulness to us when we’ve acted in faith in Him, even if it meant holding on to nothing else.  Therefore:

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” – Psalm 34:8

The best way to know that He is good is to try for ourselves, even when it’s hard or doesn’t make sense.

[1] If you don’t know, after Ravi died it was revealed that he had inappropriate relationships with massage therapists and others.  A once-influential ministry ended up in tatters, and some of Ravi’s followers ended up embarrassed and wondering what to believe.
[2] Hebrews 12:1b-2

The Gospel is About a Who, not a How

Todd R 1 Comment

In chapter 9 of John’s gospel he records a story of Jesus healing a man who was born blind.  In John’s story, Jesus made some mud out of saliva and dirt, then put the mud on the man’s eyes.  Then Jesus tells the man to go wash off the mud in a pool.  When the man does this, his blindness is gone!

Because this man was born blind and had begged in the temple area for years, the miracle was hard to deny as a claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but many of the people put their focus on the wrong question: the how of the miracle.  Four times in the chapter someone asks how the man’s eyes were healed, as if the method of the healing was the important part.  Some of “The neighbors and those who had seen him before” asked “how were your eyes opened?” [1]  Then some Pharisees asked the man how he was healed.  In both cases, the man formerly blind explained what Jesus had done.

Then, because Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath and because practicing medicine on the Sabbath was against traditional Jewish regulations, the Pharisees asked, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”[2]  The Pharisees kept looking for an explanation.  A scientific or natural explanation.  Perhaps this wasn’t the same man who was born blind.  So they found his parents, “and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’”[3]

The better question is who healed the man born blind, but the Pharisees didn’t want to deal with that question.  They had already made up their minds that Jesus wasn’t from God.  So, they focused on the how, on the method.  People still do this today, as Warren Wiersbe wrote: “We want to understand the mechanics of a miracle instead of simply trusting the Savior, who alone can perform the miracle.”[4]

Modern people want scientific explanations because they think nothing exists outside of scientific understanding and when something doesn’t fit that worldview it is denied or explained away.  We want to fit miracles within our pre-existing understanding of the world.  And when we can’t, we resist any way we can.  In the case of the Pharisees and Jesus, “they cast him out.”[5]  Anything to avoid the real question: who is this person who can do things that don’t fit into our narrow view of the universe?  Comparing John’s gospel to modern events, we see this is nothing new.

However, if Jesus is who He said He was – God the Son – no miracle should be unbelievable because God has absolute control over His own creation.  If Jesus is God, He exists outside of our universe and so obviously can’t be explained by using scientific laws that describe this universe.  But we continue to resist.  When people want to avoid dealing with their God, they still stick to the “how” question to avoid the more important question of “who.”

If you’re struggling to understand the miraculous stories of the Bible, make sure you’re asking the right (“who”) questions.  If you’re talking to an unbeliever having the same struggles, make sure they’re asking the right questions, because: If Jesus is who God is, every how is possible, including the greatest miracle: the salvation of anyone who would believe in Him.  And, Jesus can heal anyone who is blind to this reality.

[1] John 9:8-10
[2] John 9:16
[3] John 9:19
[4] Wiersbe, Warren.  Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986).  P. 143
[5] John 9:34

The Last Enemy is Death

Todd R 1 Comment

In life there are many difficult questions, and two of the hardest are also common objections to Christianity: 1) Why doesn’t God do anything about the evil in this world? and 2) Why do bad things happen to good people?

However, the Bible does not leave Christians without hope in the face of these questions.

First, part of what God is doing about the evil in this world is the fact that everyone dies.  The Bible teaches that every bad thing in this world is a result of sin – people deviating from God’s purposes – and that because of that sin the world is cursed[1].  Not only do people hurt each other, but the creation itself, including human nature, is not in its ideal state.

Death was not originally part of this world, but came in to the world as a result of sin and is a constant reminder of it.  In Genesis chapter 5, there is a genealogy from Adam to Noah.  The phrase “and he died” is repeated over and over again and is a reminder that this world is not perfect.  God created a consequence for the sin of mankind: death.  While the Bible doesn’t explain why there was a snake in the garden or why Adam and Eve sinned, it does describe what God is doing about it.  When we ask why bad things happen, we acknowledge that bad things exist, that they shouldn’t exist, and that they can happen to anyone.  God isn’t doing nothing about the evil in the world – we all die and that is part of the judgment.

So, the two objections to Christianity (Why doesn’t God do anything about the evil in this world? and why do bad things happen to good people?) end up being contradictory because part of what God does about the evil in this world is that bad things (death) happen to everyone.

However, the Bible teaches that there are two deaths: a physical death and a spiritual death.  In the first, our soul is separated from our body and our body dies.  In the second, our soul is separated from God eternally and our soul dies but exists forever away from God’s presence and blessings.  A second thing that God is doing about the evil in this world is that the first death is universal, but the second death is not.

Fortunately, judgement and death aren’t the only things God is doing about sin.  What does this mean?  Note the second half of God’s curse on the serpent from Genesis 3:15 –

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
            and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
            and you shall bruise his heel.”

Who is being bruised here?  In the last phrase, Satan is injuring Christ through the crucifixion, but it’s described as a wound to the heel because it is not fatal.  Jesus was raised to life eternal.  On the other hand, Christ shall bruise the head of Satan – a fatal blow that he will never recover from.  This was determined from the beginning.

While judgement comes to all in physical death as a result of sin, through Christ there is a way out from spiritual, eternal death.  Jesus has paid the price for our sin and has conquered eternal, spiritual death as a result.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” – 1 Corinthians 15:26

Praise God!

[1] See Genesis 3:19 and 3:22

The Body of Christ is Irreducibly Complex

Todd R 2 Comments

Among the various camps in the debate between creation and evolution is a set of ideas called intelligent design (ID).  A key part of ID is “irreducible complexity,” a term that comes from the book Darwin’s Black Box, by Lehigh professor Michael Behe.[1]

In short, irreducible complexity argues that evolution by chance, without an intelligent designer driving it, is unreasonable because the multiple systems in a complex organism like a human body – circulatory, digestive, endocrine, muscular, respiratory, and so on – are all interdependent on each other.  The circulatory system alone, with the heart pumping blood through an elaborate system of arteries and veins, is difficult to imagine developing by chance occurrence, but a chance evolution of that system alongside all the other parts it is dependent on is even more far-fetched.  All systems evolving together in lockstep without failing is a much more difficult problem to explain scientifically without a Creator.  The circulatory system takes what the respiratory and digestive systems take in and deliver it to the other systems that use it.  Without the other parts, it has no function and cannot survive and further evolve.

An isolated, inanimate, heart. Photo by Ali Hajiluyi on Unsplash

However, my intent here is not to prove intelligent design, but to consider the apostle Paul’s words about the church as the body of Christ.  In 1 Corinthians 12:12, he wrote: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  He continues that no part of the body can say it is not a part of the body because it has a different function than another part (1 Cor. 12:15-16), and also that no part of the body can say it doesn’t need all of the other parts (1 Cor. 12:21).  Those who are in Christ Jesus cannot be divided.

Paul follows his description of the body with 1 Corinthians 13, a powerful statement on the supremacy of love, and in context a gentle rebuke to the idea that a body can survive as individual, unrelated units.  In a human body, any part can only survive by serving the other parts.  Even an organ as incredibly complex and important as a heart cannot survive if it decided to pump blood only for itself.  Where would it get its nutrients?  How would it flee from danger?  As Paul wrote: “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?” (1 Cor. 12:17).  Even an organ as important as the heart is useless in isolation.  It gets its very life and purpose by what it does for the body.

As Jesus said to His disciples in John 13:34-35 – “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

As the song says, they will know we are Christians by our love, and the church Jesus came to build is irreducibly complex.  There is no appendix[2] in the church, which is the body of Christ.

[1] Behe, Michael.  Darwin’s Black Box (1996).
[2] While we commonly think of this organ as useless, God as our Maker didn’t put it there by accident.