Tag Doubt

Supernatural Claims of Natural Men

Todd R Leave a comment

[Note to readers: Other than this note and minor edits this is the second post from a short-lived, now-defunct blog from 2011.  The first post is here.  While working on the next set of new long form posts, I will re-post what ended up being only 3 apologetics-focused posts from 2011 each Saturday.  I’m considering adding in some similar work to the new site – let me know what you think!]

John 12:28 – [Jesus said] “Father, glorify Your name.  Then a voice came from heaven, saying “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”

Have you ever heard a voice from heaven?  If you did, how would you know to believe it?

When this voice spoke, the hearers still had to decide whether or not to believe it.  In John 12, not everyone on the scene had faith that this voice was actually God.  Not everyone who heard it decided that this God deserved their obedience.  As in my last post, these people were eyewitnesses to a supernatural event that many today would be thrilled to see, to “prove” God’s existence.

Suppose someone on the scene looked up at the sky and said: “Who do you think you are?  I don’t know who this ‘Jesus’ guy is, and I sure don’t know who you are – why should I follow you?”  The voice from heaven responds with a bolt of thunder, and this poor man is now a dead smoldering heap.

Now, the man next to this one could be thinking: “I really should follow this Jesus person, because if I don’t, the next bolt could be for me.”  Perfectly rational, a solid example of reason.  But, this reason is not the same as faith.  This man’s other response could be: “Jesus really is the Son of God, and deserves my loyalty.  I’m grateful that He is willing to accept me as I am.”  Did the lightning really provide convincing evidence of this?  Are there still other alternatives?  Could the voice have been some other deity trying to gain followers?  Perhaps, so therefore this second response is more like faith than reason.

Even faced with overwhelming evidence, “reason” does not power a decision to truly make a decision, “faith” does.  Reason can lead a horse to water, but it can’t make him drink.  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8)  (Not to have a predestination argument here, but I think most Christians would agree that faith would be meaningless without grace, and vice versa – and that either or both come from God to one who does not deserve or earn it)

Claims contrary to Christianity also require a supernatural faith (albeit one without a source), and here are two examples:

1) “There is no God” – Some say that if he exists, he should show himself.  Of course, as we have seen, even those who claimed to know Jesus Himself and witness his miracles say this would not convince a skeptic who decided not to believe.  Also, how does one prove God does not exist?  Europeans used to believe there was no such thing as a black swan because they had never seen one – until they traveled more of the world.  They could never prove that black swans did not exist, but they could (and did) believe it.   To prove it, they would have to be personally present in all parts of the universe at all times simultaneously – in essence, they would need to be God to prove that all swans were white.  “There is no God” cannot be proven by reason, but a skeptic can claim that they have not witnessed God in their experience, and that they have faith that God does not exist outside their experience.

2) “Man is the result of purely natural processes” – If “natural” is that which science has explained, and “supernatural” is everything else, it turns out that this is a claim about the supernatural, not a claim that there is no supernatural.  If you change “observed” to “observable” in Merriam-Webster’s definition of “supernatural” (“of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe”), you see this distinction.  Merriam-Webster takes for granted that all things “supernatural” will become “natural” through scientific advancement in the way the current majority thinks they will.  The consensus in Galileo’s day was that everything revolved around the earth – but the consensus was proved wrong.  Proving that man is purely natural requires that the current thinking on evolution is correct, and that nothing outside of current knowledge could ever possibly over-turn it.

However, in the words of GK Chesterton, “Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic.”  The “evidence” for one species changing into another is based on deductions from historical fossils, not on eyewitness accounts.  In modern labs, we have seen species mutate and acquire new traits, but we have not yet seen lab results of a monkey (or anything else) mutating into a man.    The theory of human evolution makes a lot of claims about the history of mutations across species.  It takes the observed changes within a species, and assumes that over millennia these mutations lead to one species changing into another, then another…  It claims that future evidence will inevitably support current evidence, in spite of the fact that evidence for evolution has been overturned repeatedly in history.  What I was taught in middle school was different than what I was taught in college.  If the historical track record is not that good, why have faith that the future track record will be perfect?  Evolutionists refer to the process of discovery by trial and error consistently as “progress”, but is it always?  Unless you already know beyond any shadow of doubt what you are progressing toward, how do you know you are progressing?

I’m not claiming to have dis-proved evolution here, but only to show that to prove it beyond a shadow of any possible doubt is beyond the power of reason.  It’s another black swan.

So, the claim that there is no supernatural, is a claim about the supernatural.  These are claims that would require supernatural means to prove.  They require seeing the future and the past.  To believe a supernatural claim without supernatural evidence requires faith.  It is beyond reason and proof.  To me, the evidence and the logic do not live up to the claims they want to support.

Some may say I’m stretching here, and providing a no-win situation for the materialist, but even if scientific advancement somehow demonstrates in a lab everything that evolution claims, evolution still falls short because it is not really a theory of origins.  It is a theory about how the current inhabitants on Earth grew from previous ones.  But where did the original ones come from?  Why does the universe follow certain patterns and laws?  Where did those come from?  Scientists would simply have moved from taking evolution on faith to taking these answers on faith, and making assumptions about the future evidence.

There will always be such a thing as the “supernatural”.  Although science will continue to advance, the amount of total knowledge in the universe will always be larger than the quantity of human understanding.  All people speculate about what’s out there in that realm we can’t reproduce in a lab.  Many people have dogmas about what’s in that space – evolutionists believe that everything they do not understand yet will confirm that there is no God; religious people of all types believe that there is enough evidence in the world we’ve already observed to warrant the possibility of a God.

All people have faith – just in different things.  Materialists fail to explain how man, as a mere complex set of materials and chemical reactions, consciously and intentionally goes about his life pondering deep thoughts about the origin of himself, while an earthworm does not bother.  Christians – even the authors of the Bible – fail to explain how some consciously and intentionally choose faith when in the presence of miracles, while others do not (other than to say that “God did it”).

On the one hand, you have the supernatural claims of natural men.  They claim two things: 1) that they (and you) are the accidental result of millennia of chemical mutations, and that these chemicals follow rules that they do not know the origins of (yet); and 2) that the chemicals in their brain “believe” without a doubt that they can predict that what they do not know will confirm what they currently know and believe.  This future evidence will prove their current belief, which was itself the result of a chain of accidental chemical reactions (but apparently under the purposeful control of some unknown thing that seeks to convince you of your mere natural chemicalness).

On the other hand, there is a written record of a man who claimed to be from that supernatural realm, who sees the future and the past, who knew there were black swans.  How many there were.  Where they were.  And that the Europeans would eventually find them.  This man asked for your belief – which set of claims is more reasonable?

“Come near to God and he will come near to you” – James 4:8

Stuck in a “Trench” of Doubt

Todd R Leave a comment

Facebook has a reputation as a place where people show only the best parts of their lives. It’s also known as a place where people love to argue and point out others’ faults. Can Facebook be a place where people become more authentic and at the same time, expect to meet their loving Savior? Sometimes authentic is uncomfortable, but doesn’t love require it? If Facebook “isn’t the place for it”, then what is Facebook for?

I don’t know the answer, but know it will take a lot of creativity, such as that described in article linked below, about a 2018 “concept album” called Trench from twenty øne piløts: “Overall, in Trench, Tyler Joseph describes what it means to live as a human (or Christian) in the face of brutal doubts, fear and insecurity. It can be terrifying for Christians to admit they do not fully know where they are going. We often worry doubt itself might be a sin. We want to appear in full control of our faith.” – author Clifford Stumme

You can read the full article “Twenty One Pilots’ New Album Has a Stark Lack of Faith … And That’s the Point” from Relevant Magazine here.

What do you think? What are more examples?

The Sure Eternal Path

Todd R 2 Comments

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” – Hebrews 6:19-20

We have all seen the John 3:16 signs.  At seemingly every sporting event, someone with a spot guaranteed to be on camera has one.  T-shirts, bumper stickers, frisbees, and probably even iPhone cases have this verse.  This verse is so popular because it is a concise and easy to remember summary of God’s message to humanity: although the world has turned on Him in rebellion, He has not given up on it, but loves His people enough to make the ultimate sacrifice of His own Son to save them from perishing.  In the last post, I wrote: “God’s purpose in creating His kingdom, populated by His family, will not be thwarted by sin because sinners are the only people available to join His family… Through the death of His only begotten Son on the cross, God became Father of His people”

But what’s “eternal life”?  What is God offering?

It’s not that those who believe in Jesus will simply live forever, because that’s actually true for everyone.  The Bible explains this, but I like this quote from C.S. Lewis[1]:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

So, this “eternal life” is different than just biological existence for all time.  In my last post, I wrote: “Wisdom is the ability to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of the wicked.”  However, the Bible also contrasts the two paths as representing “life” and “death”.  If “life” is being on the path of righteousness, then eternal life means that the destiny of those who follow Jesus is to eternally choose the path of righteousness.  This eternal life is also lived in community where everyone else is always on that path, and everything that exists in that world will reflect righteousness.  Every decision we make will be in the Spirit; we will always have the right Answer.  This does not mean that we will be robots following orders, but it means that our morality and creativity will be unconstrained by our fallen nature.  Righteousness and justice will “come naturally”.

In the meantime, Christians can taste this future, but incompletely, as they imperfectly try to follow Jesus.  It can be quite frustrating as nobody can meet the standard no matter how hard they try.

The Inner Place Behind the Curtain
Now the 2nd introductory verses, from Hebrews 6, contain one of my favorite Biblical metaphors.  Hebrews 6:19 starts with “We have this”, but what is “this”?  Earlier in chapter 6, the writer wants his readers to “have the full assurance of hope”[2] and tells them that Abraham was blessed and multiplied into a nation, not by Abraham’s efforts, but by the promise and oath of God, who cannot lie[3].  After all, the famous hymn is called “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, not “Great is My Faithfulness”.  The destiny of the Christian is founded on the cornerstone of Christ’s completed work, and God will not change His mind.  Verses 19 and 20 were written to make this statement as emphatically as possible to the 1st Century Jewish reader.

For other readers in the 21st Century, some background might be necessary:  The book of Hebrews, written for Jews who had become Christians, includes a lot of imagery they would recognize like “the inner place behind the curtain”.  In the Old Testament, God’s tabernacle, and later temple(s), were indications of at least two things: that He was present with His people, and that He could only be approached in the way He prescribed.  God is Holy and Just, unable to tolerate sin, so entering His presence is serious business.  In the very early days of Israel, the Levite priesthood were commanded to kill anyone who came too close to God’s presence[4].  A vastly elaborate sacrificial system was implemented to illustrate God’s requirements for meeting with sinners: an innocent creature had to die.  Animals symbolized the later sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Even the altar upon which the animals were sacrificed required its own sacrifices to be acceptable.

But the “Holy of Holies” was the ultimate statement of how serious approaching God is.  This innermost room of the temple was only entered once per year (on the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur), and only by the high priest, who only can enter after hours of preparation.  Once there, the high priest would sprinkle the blood of a sacrificed bull on and in front of God’s “mercy seat”, the cover of the ark of the covenant and a sign of His presence[5].  Later Jewish tradition (not found in the Bible) indicates that others would stand outside the room holding a rope that was tied to the high priest, who also had bells tied around his waist.  If those outside heard the bells jingling, followed by silence, they would assume the high priest did not atone properly for the sins of the people, died in God’s presence, and needed to be dragged out by the rope.

While being dragged out, the high priest would pass under the veil, or curtain, that covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies.  This curtain was a physical reminder of the barrier to God represented by His holiness.

Anchor and Forerunner
Hebrews 6:19 is the only place in the ESV Bible that refers to a metaphorical anchor.  Literal anchors are mentioned in the book of Acts and nowhere else.  As you know, an anchor is a heavy object, usually metal, attached to a boat or ship by rope or cable for the purpose of securing the vessel to the bed of the body of water.  Typically, an anchor is used to keep you in place.  However, Hebrews mentions a forerunner because this anchor is used to secure you to a destination, not to keep you in place.  Where you are now is not your eternal home and God does not want you to anchor there.

In the early centuries A.D., a “forerunner” was a boat sent to meet larger boats at sea, take their anchor, carry it into the harbor, and deposit it at the destination.  Thus, the incoming boat was still at sea, but assured of reaching its destination.  It just had to follow the path of the rope to the anchor, which would also keep it from going too far adrift.

So, we now have the parts of the metaphor about what provides our “full assurance of hope”: anchor, curtain, and forerunner. (Melchizedek I’ll leave for another time)

What Hebrews is telling us is that our hope is in God’s promise, and that the promise is secure because Christ Himself took our anchor and secured it inside the Holy presence of God where atonement has been made for His people.  When Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, He cried “it is finished”[6], and “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”[7]  In one moment, all of the elaborate Old Testament ceremony symbolizing the requirements for being in God’s presence became irrelevant, and Jesus became “the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh”[8]  Once for all, His flesh was the only sacrifice necessary for us to know God.  For His people, there is no longer a veil or curtain as a barrier, but through the tearing of His own flesh, we have sure and eternal access to Him.

While we remain metaphorically at sea tossed by waves of chaos, Jesus is in the Temple, and the Holy Spirit is at sea with us “hovering over the face of the waters”[9].  The Spirit is both a connection to the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul”, Christ our forerunner, and also a voice telling us what to do in the meantime.  We’re surrounded by, and are, a creation in progress, and He gives us our task, but also the certainty of ultimate success.  While our purpose can be frustrated, God’s purpose is sure, and His promise is for His people.

Consider this: If God wanted to change His mind about you, He’s had plenty of opportunity before now.  Hours passed while Christ was on the cross.  He was mocked as helpless and unable to save Himself, while Jesus knew at any moment, He could ask His Father to send twelve legions of angels to save Him[10]!  (Or He could just save Himself).  In those hours, Omniscient God considered all the sins of all His people over all of time and decided: “Worth it”.  The all-powerful actively chose to embrace powerlessness in the face of hours of torture to save His people.  He will not turn His back on you now, or ever, if you are His.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” – Philippians 1:6

Upgrading the Moral GPS
Remember that the purpose of the forerunner metaphor is that we may “have the full assurance of hope”, enabling us to walk in the path of righteousness.  Confidence that our hope is in God’s promise and Christ’s faithfulness has several implications.

First, having Jesus as our forerunner means that our Moral GPS is always pre-programmed with salvation as the ultimate destination.  2 Corinthians 5:5 says “God…has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” and the Life Application Study Bible notes: “His work in our lives today assures us that the healing process will be thoroughly completed in Christ’s presence. Each time the Holy Spirit reminds you of Scripture, convicts you of sin, restrains you from selfish behavior, or prompts you to love, you have evidence that he is present. You have the Spirit within you beginning the transformation process.”

We all take wrong turns along the way, but we end up with Christ in the end.  Our mistakes don’t cost us our salvation, because God already knows them and has taken them into account.  This doesn’t mean we haphazardly proceed without any concern of consequence, but as I wrote in an earlier post: “We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to passivity – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear.  We fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, thus actively seeking to please Him.”

If you are in Christ, the Spirit prays for you, “groaning”, while speaking to your spirit internally.

Until Jesus returns, the other voices in the GPS don’t turn off, and we’re not always 100% sure of what God wants.  There may seem to be more than one “good” option.  Security in Jesus makes us tend toward moving forward.  Mistakes are part of the process, and we can learn and grow from them.  Even if you have some doubt, it’s God’s faithfulness that counts.

Second, God called you for a reason, and it might be related to your current circumstances.  1 Corinthians 7:17 says “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.”  You have a role in God’s family, and it’s a role only you can fulfill.  Therefore, in your Moral GPS, fear God’s voice for you alone, not what God has called others to do.

In the book “Compassion” cited in earlier posts, the authors write: “Saints and ‘outstanding’ Christians should…never be perceived as people whose concrete behavior must be imitated.  Rather, we should see in them living reminders that God calls every human being in a unique way and asks each of us to become attentive to His voice in our own unique lives.”[11]  You are called to be you, not the Apostle Paul, Billy Graham or Mother Theresa.

Third, knowing you won’t lose God’s favor may give you courage to not live to please men.  God might tell you to do unexpected things.  Perhaps things that are outside the norm or have not been done before.  Therefore, in the Moral GPS, we must discern what part of our “rebelliousness” needs repentance, as being outside of God’s justice and righteousness, and that which merely violates social and other convention.  Sometimes being yourself as God intended means being unlike what others expect by earthly standards.  You may be called to meet a specific, timely, need for something creative.  There may be a powerful, but unconventional way to encourage others.

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:58

Coda
Lauren Daigle’s hit “You Say” is a great closer for this post.  It is a reminder of the reliability and strength of Jesus and His voice when other voices, including perhaps your own, are turning against you.  An anchor of hope in the midst of trouble.  Only God can tell you who you are.

Watch the video
Or read the lyrics

[1] Lewis, C.S.  The Weight of Glory (1941).
[2] Hebrews 6:11
[3] Summary of Hebrews 6:13-18
[4] Numbers 1:51. The Levites were a type of priest, after whom the book of Leviticus is named.
[5] Leviticus 16:1-16
[6] John 19:30
[7] Mark 15:38
[8] Hebrews 10:20
[9] Genesis 1:2
[10] Matthew 26:53
[11] McNeill, Donald P.; Morrison, Douglas A.; Nouwen, Henri J. M.  Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (1982).

Tuning in to Wisdom

Todd R 2 Comments

“But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” – Psalm 130:4
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” – Proverbs 9:10

So far, I’ve written about Jesus as the only Answer to our need for purpose.  He is the only one qualified to be the Truth we can rely on, the Way to our salvation, and the Life that can restore us to what we are intended to be.  Jesus is the cornerstone upon which we must build our lives and impact the world around us, as a witness to the God who loves us and offers us a new heaven and new earth where His purpose and our purpose are perfectly aligned.

God’s “perfect system” exists only in heaven, but in this world, He calls His people to do His work, pointing the way to His kingdom. But if we are to create for His glory, we require His wisdom, which I briefly mentioned last time as “set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth”, and there, “like a master workman”[1] To all the people and kingdoms of the world, His call is to repentance. If you want utopia, you need to go through Him.

Now we come down from the almost cosmic level of the prior posts to the level of the individual.

Learning Fear

What follows started with me pondering Psalm 130:4: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”  I read this a few weeks ago and initially thought it was backwards: why does knowing that God forgives make us fear Him more?  Shouldn’t we fear Him less when forgiven?  Also, if “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”[2] then to find purpose we need wisdom, and to have wisdom we need fear.

Getting Psalm 130:4 to make sense with the order of forgiveness, fear, and then wisdom required a re-thinking of repentance.  My conclusion was: the one who has not been forgiven has not repented, and the reason they did not repent was that they did not fear God.  They did not understand Him properly.

But the one who has been forgiven has repented, and they repented because they understood that was the best thing for them to do.  A proper understanding and respect for God’s character makes us turn to Him with our guilt, rather than run away from Him.  We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to passivity – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear.  We fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, thus actively seeking to please Him.  When we pray and ask for forgiveness, it’s often a simple prayer made with the proverbial faith of a child, but if you unpack the implications, prayers of repentance acknowledge:

1) Him as the source of the law, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong
2) Him as the righteous judge who is personally offended by our sin
3) His omniscience, knowing we cannot hide our sin
4) His uniqueness, as there is no other God to turn to
5) His steadfast love for us, knowing He bore the cost of our sin, and therefore we can approach Him
6) His compassion since He lived as a man
7) His power and willingness to heal us
8) His consistency of character: that He is not arbitrary
9) …and more

If we don’t implicitly or explicitly believe these things, then why repent and ask forgiveness from God?  Why expect to get it?  Exploring that set of statements could fill multiple volumes of theology books, but we don’t need that knowledge.  Fortunately, in His grace, He honors our heartfelt confessions.  He paid the price for all our inadequacies – even when we don’t fully understand our own prayers or who we’re praying to.  The Spirit pleads with the Father on our behalf[3].  Without His inexhaustible grace, our doubt on any one of these points might prevent us from repentance.  Mercifully, our forgiveness is based on His faithfulness to us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1:9

The righteous must live by faith because otherwise God would be playing whack-a-mole with our doubts for eternity.  Faith – our trust in God – is imperfect but it is the only thing that can bridge the gap between the faith of a child and the omniscience of God, who knows all our doubts and all their answers.  We come as we are.

In pondering Psalm 130:4, I better appreciate how complex, and in fact, miraculous, repentance really is.  Genuine repentance leads to forgiveness, which gives us a better appreciation of who God is.  We will have lived Psalm 34:8 for ourselves:

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

Only through your acceptance of the cross, where Christ’s atoning blood was shed for you, can God in His Holiness commune with you.  Only through forgiveness will the Holy Spirit come and live in you – the indwelling referred to last time.  Only by tasting of His goodness do we really know what He is like.  It requires participation on our part.  If you never repent, you don’t know what it tastes like, only what you’ve been told.  And you might not have been told the truth.

So, forgiveness enables proper fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord enables wisdom, but what’s wisdom?

Upgrading Wisdom

I’ve had some sort of working definition of “wisdom” for most of my life.  As a teenager, I remember joking that it was the ability to learn from other people’s mistakes.  Sounded teenager-wise, but how do I know what’s a mistake?  Later, I read somewhere about wisdom being “skill at living life”.  Also sounds useful, but perhaps vague and worldly feeling.  Even later in life, I started thinking of it as “being able to make decisions based on facts, instead of wishful thinking.”  This has been even more useful, but which facts do you follow?  How do you choose between two “true” options?

Now I have a new definition: Wisdom is the ability to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of the wicked.  Reading the Psalms and Proverbs specifically, there is a contrast between these “paths”, and an idea that moral decisions are like a route between places.  You can be on one path or the other, and with wisdom, “you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path”[4]

You may be thinking: “that sounds like a moral compass!”  I’ll respond with: “you need to upgrade your technology.  We use GPS now!”  Let me explain.

A compass is too simple a metaphor.  Wisdom is usually not like a clear sign pointing the way, although God can use whatever means He chooses.  In our experience, wisdom is more like one voice among many on a broken Moral GPS system, that speaks about all “political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual”[5] factors in our environment and from our experience.  It tells us to go places we shouldn’t and not to go places we should, weighing pros and cons in multiple voices.

A pre-Christian GPS considers all these factors, and a person makes decisions as they see fit to prioritize among them.  Salvation requires realizing the GPS is broken, trusting someone who knows how to fix it, and then striving to follow the new instructions.  When this happens, a Christian gets an added feature in their Moral GPS, a “Holy Spirit download” that adds one more (heavenly, loving) voice to the cacophony.  The Spirit speaks of the justice and righteousness referred to in both Proverbs 2:9 and in Isaiah 28:17. The Spirit speaks with the wisdom needed to measure from the cornerstone and fulfill our purpose as individuals in God’s image.

As we make decisions in the world, they reflect an inner decision, as we consult our Moral GPS, but remembering that it’s still a broken system.  Proverbs 1 contains an interesting parable.  As we walk down the streets of our inner map, Wisdom calls out and raises her voice in the markets (Pr. 1:20): “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you” (Pr. 1:23).  But the streets are noisy (also Pr. 1:20) and you continue down the wrong street (perhaps to take shelter from the voices in your head).  Wisdom refuses to answer when you discover your mistake too late.  If you respond to wisdom, you get more wisdom.

A funnier example is in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, where Lancelot is rescuing Galahad from the Castle Anthrax.  The women of the castle live alone without men and when the knights stumble by (fooled by a false Holy Grail), the women try to seduce them into staying.  Galahad should know the right thing to do, because 1) he is nicknamed “the Chaste”, and 2) the castle is named Anthrax. However, the lure of Zoot and the other women is so strong that Lancelot must forcefully drag him away.  They argue: “Can’t I have just a little peril?”  “No, it’s too perilous”.

Sometimes we have the grace of a Lancelot to save us from falling into the trap set by the wrong voices in our moral GPS.  Sometimes we’re alone.  Sometimes we’re among people who want us to do wrong.  In these cases, the strength to choose wisely must come from inside.  Back in Proverbs 1:29, wisdom says people go on the wrong path because “they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord”, suggesting that’s the deciding factor.

Absent Lancelot dragging us away, it is the fear of the Lord that makes us listen to, and act in, wisdom instead of going any which way.  It is the fear of the Lord that makes us listen to the correct voice in the broken GPS, to weigh that voice above the others.  The Holy Spirit may or may not add facts to the conversation, but it adds God’s heavenly perspective, influencing us to choose what is eternally valuable.  God does not want to drag us kicking and screaming into righteousness; He wants us to be thankful for His love and trust Him to know what’s best for us.  He knows about, and cares deeply about, every possible consequence of our actions to us and to others, not just the ones we see, or even want.

Wisdom is about taking the right action, not about accumulating facts.  Facts matter, but any voice can have facts.  In context of the Great Commandments[6], wisdom is what tells us how to love God and others actively, but in a way based on obedience that leaves the results to God.  In the book of Acts, Ananias didn’t minister to Saul, the notorious persecutor of Christians, because he thought it would end up well for Ananias[7], he did it because God told him to, and God knew that future Saul was Paul, the author of much of the New Testament.  Ananias didn’t decide based on the facts as he knew them, but he adjusted the facts in light of revelation from God.  Also, wisdom might sometimes tell you the best action is to do nothing.  Sometimes wisdom flashes a red light while others are flashing green.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” – Pr. 14:12 and 16:25.

Wisdom is why the Way, the Truth and the Life must be a person, not a set of rules or philosophy.   Truly, only you, in relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, can figure out what your purpose and identity in the body of Christ are.  Wisdom is proactive and specific to you.  Nobody else’s situation is your situation, and nobody else has the same relationships, abilities, and resources.  Books, advice, and experience can be helpful, but you need to “taste and see” the Holy Spirit in you, working at your very core where only He can reach.

Wisdom will put you on a path that provides you, and this world, a taste of heaven.  It is informed by a justice and righteousness – God’s law and Christ’s character – that is not of this world.  With wisdom you can build and create on the cornerstone of Christ.  The world might not like it, but the world is not your Creator.

Fulfilling our purpose requires Wisdom and Grace, motivated by Godly fear – perhaps even the boldness of Caleb in the wilderness to face giants despite the majority opinion[8].  The next post, God willing, will be about combating the other voices in the Moral GPS.

Future Topics: Mind Your Own Business, Learning from Chaos, Walking on Water, some song analysis, recycled posts from my old, defunct blog, and hopefully much more!

Thanks for reading – comment below and/or share if you want.  What was meaningful to you?  What did you disagree with?  How do you define wisdom?  How does the world?

[1] Proverbs 8:22-31
[2] Proverbs 9:10a
[3] Romans 8:26-27
[4] Proverbs 2:9
[5] See last post.  These are some arenas of opposition defeated by Christ on the cross, and that He wants His people to influence.
[6] Matthew 22:37-39.  In short, love God and love your neighbor.
[7] Acts 9:13
[8] Numbers 13:30