Saturday, November 17, 2007

Jesus Christ, Morons, and Blood Clotting

I am reviewing a medical disorder called DIC (disciminated intravascular coagulation). This is the kind of thing I do for fun. It is related to my job as a nurse.

DIC can kill a patient in short order, and is fairly difficult to detect. It is more suspected than directly seen. Certain things, like bacterial infection in the blood, can cause the clotting system to go crazy and form thousands of little blood clots all over the body. This dams up blood from tissue down stream, thus killing the tissue and eventually the whole patient. It also uses up all the clotting factors in the blood thus causing the patient to be susceptible to sudden, irreversible bleeding. Nasty.

Stick with me. This all has a point. When a blood vessel is damaged and starts to leak (bleeding), a number of things happen. Fibers in the blood are acted upon by chemicals released by the damaged cells and start joining together to form a mesh over the wound from the inside. Red blood cells, other things in the blood, and activated platelets get stuck in the mesh and stop the bleeding. After the clot has formed and stopped the bleeding long enough for the vessel to close and start to mend, the fibers in the mesh start to break apart because they are acted upon by other chemicals. The fibers break into their component parts (fibrin degradation products) and are: 1. Unable to form any more clots; 2. Consumed by scavenger cells in the blood and secreted as waste. Fibrin degradation products can be created by other processes like inflammation. However, there is one that is specific to the dissolution of a clot called D-dimer.

When a person is suspected of being in DIC, a panel of tests is run which checks for D-dimer and some other things. If D-dimer is present in large amounts, along with a lowered platlet count and elevated clotting times, it is indicative of DIC.

This, believe it or not, is a greatly simplified explanation of what really happens when blood clots, either normally or abnormally. The process is unbelievably complex. The understanding of it has undergone several revisions over the years because the researchers continue to fine additional factors in the process.

The other day, I was watching another iteration of Darwin’s proposition about the origin of life and how life got to it’s present state. In a sentence, the Darwinists believe that some kind of simple life form (there is no such thing) got started by accident and continued to mutate and differentiate until all the different life forms that now exist developed. This occured by random chance processes over a long period of time.

That intelligent people actually believe this in the face of the remarkable wholistic complexity of everything is almost beyond me. No one believes that his computer is the product of random chance. It is obvious every time one must be repaired that the owner thinks that the machine is a product of intelligent design, was made for a purpose, and had irreducible complexity (all the parts have to be present and working for the whole thing to work).

But this same person may believe that the person who built or repairs the computer is just the product of random processes operating by chance over a long period of time.

However, the explanation for this is fairly simple. And, of course, it is in the Bible.

Paul states in Ephesians chapter four that those whom Christ has not regenerated by His Spirit “walk in the emptiness of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. . . .” And in Romans chapter one, he says that Adam’s race once knew God, but did not like Him, and did not want to retain him in their system of knowledge. For this reason, God handed them over to this ignorance, and, while they (and we) profess to be wise, they (we) have become morons. Morons who will nevertheless face the wrath and judgement of God because, in the face of the evidence to the contrary, namely the majestic, infathomable complexity of all that can be observed, we insist that this God does not exist or that He is irrelevant, and refuse to worship Him or to believe on His Son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of crimes against the Creator. All of Adam’s race is guilty corporately and personally of discounting God our Creator in some way. We are all guilty of volunteering to be morons. We are all, in our natural state, volunteer criminals against the Living God.

Jesus Christ said to all us morons, “I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but he shall have the light of life.”

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Our Bounden Duty

Day before yesterday (actually it was night before yesternight) one of my patients asked me to bring her Communion, since none of the pastoral staff of her church had been to visit her during her long hospital stay. In preparation, I was attempting to determine the Gospel reading for that Sunday, since I use the Anglican liturgy when I do weddings, funerals, and Communion.

The Anglican Church is not to be outdone by anyone for making the simple absurdly complicated. They have fancy names for regular things. For instance, the janitor is called the Sextant. Now you could throw your chest out and say you are a Sextant by profession, and non-Anglicans would think you to be a navigational expert.

Well, it was kind of like that, trying to figure out the Gospel reading for this Sunday. I wasn’t in church because it was a work day. So I began going through all the tables in the front of the BCP (Book of Common Prayer), the book that contains prayers, collects, ceremonies for every occasion imaginable, and maybe including Elizabethan imprecations to pronounce on your children when they “get to be too much.”

The Anglican Liturgical calendar starts with Advent Sunday, which is usually the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Then there are the Sundays of Advent, then Epiphany, then St. John the Evangelist Sunday, and Holy Innocents Sunday then in the spring are the Gesima sisters, Septuagesima, Sexigesima (she’s the bad girl in the family) Quinquagesima, and their little step-sister, Ash Wednesday. Then there is Lent (or Lint, depending on what kind of filter you have), and Easter, and then the rest of the year is the first Sunday after Easter, the Second, etc., until Advent comes back around.

Well, I finally ran out of time and guessed that this was the 427th Sunday after Easter. Using this bit of divination, and reckoning that, since last Sunday the Gospel reading was the last part of Luke 16, this Sunday, it might be the first part of Luke 17. So I chose that for the Gospel portion to read when I said the Eucharistic Liturgy for my patient.

In Luke 17, Our Lord tells a parable of a man who has a servant. He asks if the man should thank his servant for doing his job. “I trow not,” he said. “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do.’“

In the Eucharistic Liturgy there are a couple of passages which resonate with this passage from Luke.

One is , “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God.”

Another is “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee . . . .”

My point is this, that it is our bounden duty to give thanks to God for His goodness to us and to offer up our selves, our souls and bodies in His service, even to the point of death. But even if we should do these things perfectly and to the letter (which we don’t), we would not give back to God any surplus on His investment (this is the meaning of unprofitable). We would only have done that which is right and “our bounden duty” to do.

Which brings me to the bare truth of the matter which is stated in the prayer of confession: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed . . . provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.”

We haven’t even done that which is our duty toward God to do. And we engage in that which it is our duty not to do.

And yet, we can pray that, through the substitutionary merit of Jesus Christ, God would receive us and forgive us, “not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Understanding the lovingkindness of the LORD

“Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.”

This is the last line from Psalm 107. This Psalm gives examples of different ways in which the LORD is kind and loving toward Adam’s race. I have written previously about expressions of God’s wrath in Nature, and that it really is no surprise, once the truth about man’s natural emnity toward God, and God’s righteous indignation about it is grasped. The only surprise about things like devastating storms and fires and such is that they don’t happen more often.

The real shocker is in this Psalm where God’s acts of kindness to His ungrateful enemies are set out by several examples. Yes, God does express His wrath, but more often, He expresses His lovingkindness in the ways that He makes things “Turn out alright.”

And yet the point of the Psalm is that God’s lovingkindness toward us, His enemies, is taken for granted. It is not recognized as a mercy and a kindness, a lovingkindness from the Sovreign God. We usually just act like it should be that way. The fact is it should never be that way. The point of the refrain in this Psalm, “Oh that men would praise the LORD for His wonderful works to the children of men!” -- is that they almost never do.

Nevertheless, God goes on thanklessly, both chastening man in His wrath, and at the same time wooing us toward repentance through His lovingkindnesses.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

A Hot Stake or a Cold Chop

The other day my friend John (www.cowart.info) and I were having breakfast, as we are wont to do about every other week or so. Then we went back to his house and had a pretty interesting discussion. I have had to think about it for some time. John, I know you are reading this. Set me straight if I misstate something.

John expressed concern that the way the Gospel is presented is without hope. He said, moreover, that even the way I present it offers no hope. (Imagine! This is the cost of friendship -- having to hear an honest assessment about one’s self.) He went on to say that it distresses him that the miraculous moves of God we hear about always seem to take place somewhere else, at some other time. We discussed the possibility that some of these reports, the extra-biblical ones anyway, may be overstated. We also talked about fake miracles that seem to abound these days. We considered the Billy Graham Crusade that took place here a few years ago. The promo was that Jacksonville would never be the same. But it’s just about like Mr. Graham found it -- unchanged -- well, except for an increase in local government corruption. John said it was really nothing but a Republican political rally with some Christianity sprinkled in.

More about hope: by hope, John appeared to mean hope that God is going to help me with the rent, or heal my child, or fix my toothache, etc., if I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I listened to John and tried to process what he presented. After leaving and thinking about this conversation for days, it appeared to me that our discourse moved around three ideas:

1. That God ought to do more miracles since there are so many people who need them, if He is really good.
2. That if He would, we would not have to rely on faith. We could see some miracles for ourselves.

I have struggled for two weeks now trying to think how to write this. I seem unable to express my thoughts without becoming over-complex. In outline, they are these:

1. There is an assuption that if God is really good, He will do as I think He should about my and others’ problems. This in turn assumes I am good and my goodness is the measuring rod of God’s goodness.

2. It also assumes that we do not deserve God’s unbridled wrath. But according to the Bible, we are criminals against His law, we hate Him by our inherited nature, we are willing participants in the kingdom of His enemy, Satan, and we want nothing to do with Him (God). We make up fake gods who are like us (see #1).

3. It ignores that hope only has meaning in the face of despair. If we understand our true condition before God, we should be in the depths of despair. We should not expect to have any hope.

With these in mind, I contend that the Gospel as it is presented in Scripture is that God has made an arrangement in the form of a covenant to forgive anyone who will believe on His Son, Jesus Christ as his or her substitute. This implies an admission that what happened to Jesus should happen to us. So the point of hope is that God will forgive us. I don’t see any other kind of hope presented in the New Testament except that God will forgive us on these terms, and as a result will not torture and then exterminate us in the world to come, as we deserve. I have not seen anything in the preaching of the Apostles that involves getting a new refrigerator, or even a good used one, God giving me money or anything else. He may do these things. But the presentation of the Gospel does not include this, and for many, believing on the Son of God has meant a cold chop or a hot stake, or imprisonment or poverty, or persecution. What is offered is the promise of resurrection from the dead (which all will experience) and that, at the judgement, those who belong to Christ will be passed over for judgement, and therefore will enter into eternal life.

Regarding miracles to confirm my faith: No amount of miracles is enough for those who are dependent on them. For those who recognize that the miracles that have occured in confirmation of God’s revelation in history and have been recorded in Scripture, no more are necessary, whether God ever does another one or not.

Friday, October 5, 2007

A Broken World

I was sitting at a club I belong to the other day. I was reading, as I frequently do there. A woman came up pushing a stroller with a child too big to be in a stroller. She told us she was waiting for her daughter who was attending a religion class.

But I was interested in this child. It was clear that he had some kind of congenital brain damage. He reminded me of a cousin whom I have not seen in many years. She had a similar distorted facial expression, undirected eyes, and spastic, unpurposeful movements.

When I see something like this, as we all do from time to time, it sets me to thinking about the nature of things -- of the Universe and of God. What pricks my interest is that when I saw this child, I knew something was wrong. This can only mean that I know that something is right and that this is a breach of it. A skeptic could argue that my concept of right in this sense is just based on my perception of normal, or on a social construct that is longstanding but only arbitrary.

But if I go back hundreds of generations in my thinking, I must conclude that somewhere there were some people who did not have this tradition behind them, and yet knew from within that something was wrong, implying that they also knew something was right and this is a breach of it -- that something is broken here.

The Bible says there is a God. Common sense demands there is a God, the pratting of Athiests notwithstanding. Either the Universe has always existed, which it obviously has not because it would have run down by now; or it created itself, an absurdity; or there is an all wise God of unlimited intelligence and ability who made it.

The Bible states this is the case and then goes on to say that when He made it, He said it was good. But it is clear when I see things like this poor child and his poor mother that something is broken. What was good, what I inately know to be “right”, is no longer good. Somehow it is broken. And I know it is even if no one tells me so.

So when I see things like this, I know that we live in a world that is no longer good as God made it. It does not mean God is not good. It means that man in his sinful nature, acting according to his free will, has ruined it starting with the original disobedience recorded in Genesis chapter three.

The Bible says that Christ came into the world to bear away the sin of Adam’s race and to eventually put everything back right. He will impose righteousness on people who have been forgiven by believing on Him for forgiveness of sin. He will destroy all those who chose not to, putting them out of existence, so that God may be all in all. Then God will be glorified in His creation.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Napoleon's testimony to Christ and the Bible

"I know men, and I tell you Jesus Christ was not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men will die for Him. In every other existence but that of Christ how many imperfections! From the first day to the last He is the same; majestic and simple; infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. He proposes to our faith a series of mysteries and commands with authority that we should believe them, giving no other reason than those tremendous words, 'I am God."

The Bible contains a complete series of acts and of historical men to explain time and eternity, such as no other religion has to offer. If it is not true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived; for everything in it is grand and worthy of God. The more I consider the Gospel, the more I am assured that there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the human mind. Even the impious themselves have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel, which inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration. What happiness that Book procures for those who believe it!"

Napoleon Bonaparte as cited in "Tributes to Christ and the Bible by Brainy Men Not Known as Active Christians" in The Fundamentals vol. III p. 364 published by Baker Books, 1993.

Monday, October 1, 2007

My best skill

I have a project to work on this morning, the next step in finishing a screen porch I have been building on the back of my house. I find that it takes more effort to get started on these things than to actually do them. This problem has lead all my life to a problem with procrastination.

I looked into joining a new local Procrastinators Anonymous program to get some help with this. But they keep postponing the first meeting.

The upside of this procrastination thing is that I have watched movies on video and dvd that I would have never had time to see; I have taken marathon naps that would never have been taken and dreamed of places I will never be able to go to.

As I get older I find that I have less energy (what’s up with that) to overcome inertia in getting anything started. And as tasks pile up undone, I get a little depressed because of all the things I need to do, which makes me want to go take a nap.

I have discovered that I do much better with the jobs waiting to be done if I start by making a list on a 3x5 card of about six things. It is easier to do the card, which gives me a run-up on starting the first task on the card. Let’s see, I’m looking for a card. Huuumm!. I don’t see one. I think I’ll go back to bed for a while and see if I can find one there.

What does this have to do with my Christian faith? Nothing I know of. Just that I have meant to relate these things before, but I am just now getting around to it.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Woman at the well-4

In John’s Gospel chapter 4 the Lord Jesus is talking to a woman of ill reputation at a well. They were talking about water on one hand and eternal life, figured by Jesus as “living water” which, in that day, meant running water.

His point to the woman was that the water of eternal life that he would give for the asking would be, to one who drank, the source of unending life.

This analogy is over against the analogy of the water from the well which was hard to maintain, and ran out too soon -- very much like this mortal life, the days of which “are soon cut off, and we fly away” (Psalm 90).

There are many things that could be said about this passage. I could write on it for weeks. But this is probably the last installation on this passage. And I want to point out something a bit obscure.

There is a theme in John’s Gospel that runs just under the surface about how the Jewish officials and those who followed them responded to Jesus Christ on one hand, and how those who were not of this privileged class, namely, Commoners among the Galileans, commoners in Jerusalem and surrounding area, Gentiles like the Roman Nobleman who comes up a little later on, and Samaritans responded on the other. In brief, the sections where Christ is in Jerusalem, the Jews, as John (himself a Jew) called them, saw more miracles and signs than most of the members of the other classes.

These signs certified him as the Son of God and the promised Messiah.

The religious officials had more access than anyone in the history of the world to the Holy Scriptures which pointed to him with clear identifying signs. The people of the other groups had much less access, both because they were commoners, and because they were members of groups who were more or less marginalized by the religious officials.

Yet, when the LORD God, the ultimate Author of these writings was made flesh and presented himself, the religious officials refused to recognize him. They only saw him as a threat to their wealth, power, and privilege.

John recounts several incidents in which Jesus went up to Jerusalem, the capital of official religion, and was discounted, rejected, and even in peril of his life, even though he opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead, and other things. These things just don’t happen. We all know this. So when they did happen before thousands of eyewitnesses, they were “signs” that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Saviour, the Judge of all mankind, as he said he was. The religious officials were never able to deny that these things happened. They just refused to draw the obvious conclusion.

The reason John gives for this in chapter twelve is that God had blinded their eyes and closed their ears and hardened their hearts as an act of judgement.

In contrast, however, is this woman. What great sign did Jesus do to convince her that he was the Messiah, the Saviour who should come into the world?

Apparently there was, in the corrupted religion of the Samaritans, a fable that when Messiah showed up, he would be like -- I don’t know -- like Madam Ruby -- that he would be able to tell people things about themselves that he normally should not know. And when Jesus told her to go get her husband -- well you go read the account -- she dropped her pot and ran into the city and rounded up all her men friends to come meet him. She ran around the streets saying, “This is him. He told me everything I ever did.” He didn’t, of course. He just told her one thing. But it was enough.

Nothing was enough for the officials.

So, dear reader, what is enough for you? There is, in the Bible, more than enough evidence for you to know that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and for you to believe on him for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. The Bible and the Biblical Christian Faith will stand up to honest investigation.

But you: will you insist that you already know it all like the religionists in John’s Gospel? Then your sins remain, because you insist that you see. (John 9:41). Or will you admit you do not. Like the woman who heard about the living water, will you turn in your heart and say, “Well, give it to me. I need it.”

In either case, you will have to answer to none other than Jesus Christ himself. He said that the Father had committed the judgement of all mankind to him, because he was also a man.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Woman at the well-3

John chapter 4.
Jesus has come to sit on a well, an ancient well that was at least sixteen centuries old, that belonged to Jacob. It is about noon. A woman comes out to draw a pot of water for the house. The fact that she came at this time indicates that she was a social outcast. Women usually went in a group early in the morining and late in the evening to get water. But if she came with the other women they would have abused her. Why? Because she was -- well -- she was like you and I, with one little difference. Most people knew her dirty little secrets. Most people don’t know yours and mine.

She came out and found Jesus sitting, and he asked her to run her jug down into the well and get him a drink. He, in turn, offered her “living water” (everlasting life) that, by drinking, one would never thirst again. You can read the whole conversation for yourself. I just want to point out a few things.

1. In the same way that Jesus did not have anyway to get water out of the well, the woman had no way to get the water that Jesus offered. Actually Jesus could have gotten water from the well by some other means, but the woman was completely dependent on Jesus to even know about the water of everlasting life, as well as to have it.

2. It was something everyone needed, but he only offered it to her and her friends. It was his water and he could choose to give it to whom he would. Some, in fact, many, were passed over. It is conceivable that only some of the people she invited from the city ever came out to receive the gift. In another place, Jesus said that many are called, but few are chosen.

3. He gave it to her because he wanted to, and after she had been made known of the living water, eternal life, she was able to recognize her need for it and she asked Jesus for it. If he had not made the first move, she could not have made any move at all, nor would she have known that she needed to or could or must. That was a ridiculously long sentence. My point is that she asked for it.

4. It was given to her freely, sovreignly, and by God’s foreknowledge and determinate counsel (remember, it said “he must needs go through Samaria.”

What stands out to me is that this woman was truly converted because Jesus converted her. I have become more and more appalled at the way we in evangelical circles tell people that by walking down an aisle and filling out a card and praying a prayer, they can “get born again” or “get saved”. Such words do not appear in Scripture. The Scripture’s way of saying these things is “be born again” “be saved” “be converted”. They are all passive. They are all done by God to the person, just like the drink of living water was given to the woman. She could not “get” it.

It is no wonder in my mind that so many people in churches show no evidence of having been reborn, made new, changed. They haven’t been. They have done something religious and joined the club and that is all. But often people have been robbed by this type presentation. We fail to tell folks that they are estranged from God and that He is working through their conscience and circumstances to bring them to the place of conversion. We fail to exhort people to seek the Lord diligently, and ask to be converted, so that we can believe the Gospel of Christ and be saved by Jesus. We are remiss to say that we must repent and bring forth evidence of repentance.

“Seek you the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” Isaiah 55:6-7

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Woman at the well-2

In John 4, the Lord “must needs go through Samaria” on his way back to Galilee in the North. But, in fact, he really didn’t need to go this way. Customarily, Jews went around Samaria to go north because they considered the Samarians inferior.

They were, in a sense. They were descendants of Jews who had been left in the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians in 722 b.c. The Assyrians had move in pagans from other lands they had conquered, and these Jews had intermarried with them. They had also taught them the way of the God of Israel after a fashion, but the new arrivals also kept worshipping their pagan gods. This was the source of a patchwork kind of religion in Samaria.

But it was necessary for him to go through Samaria so that he could encounter this woman, and thus bring the Gospel to these people. But this was just not done.

Lesson one: Doing the will of God sometimes takes me where I otherwise have no business.

Here is an interesting thing. It says he was wearied by the journey and sat thus on the well. The way he sat, he just looked exhausted. The word “wearied” interested me. It is from a word that means “cut down” like grain is cut down with a sickle. He was “cut down” by the difficulty of the journey. When the woman saw him, he looked like had been cut down.

Lesson two: The Scripture indicates that Christ, during his earthly sojourn, identified with our day to day suffering. How many times have I felt cut down by -- well just stuff. Right now I am saying a good-bye to a hope I have cherished for a while. But it will not happen; another in a line of beloved people to whom I have had to say good-bye in some sense: people who died, or moved away, or something else. And here is another one. And I feel like the stalk-left-standing of freshly sickled grain, standing in the hot sun, drying out, oozing sadness.

Well, so what happened to him. A nice lady of questionable reputation came and gave him some water. And this led to one of the most notable presentations of the Gospel Message in John’s book. That is for another day.

But here, when Christ came into the world as a man, he encountered the daily difficulties and unpleasantries that march against us every-day earth dwellers. And in the process of his doing of his Father’s will, these things wore him down, cut him down.

So much for a mythical, surreal, storybook type of Christianity where everyone gets saved and lives happily everafter, lives “the abundant life” and goes from day to day “having the victory!” Sometimes this is the way Christianity is presented. And there are times of unspeakable joy, and times of great enjoyment in fellowship with God. But the idea that it is always this way is hokey.

What is not hokey is that the world is fallen, not as God made it. And that, thanks to people like me, it is a mess. But that God is working to redeem it and to restore all things in such a way that His Son, Jesus Christ, will be glorified by all redeemed mankind and that in this, God will be glorified.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The woman at the well - 1

This morning, I was reading again the account of the woman at the well in John’s gospel account chapter 4. It runs from the beginning of the chapter through verse 23. I will take a couple of days to write out my thoughts on this. It is too long for one shot.


The first thing of note in this passage is the set of circumstances that brought it about:
Jesus knew that the pharasees had heard that he was even more popular than John Baptist, his forerunner. They were already out to get John. When the members of the ministerial alliance came out to one of his baptisms, he called them exactly what they were, snakes, vipers. Now, this one whom John said was the Messiah was gaining popularity. He would be an even greater threat to their power and wealth. They had acquired their power and wealth by misuse of God’s stewardship entrusted to them. They knew it. They intended to keep it.

On the other hand, the Lord Jesus was not out for fame or power. He had agreed to leave that behind when he was sent here. Isaiah says of him, “He will not strive, nor cry, nor lift up his voice in the streets.” So, in order to avoid certain conflict, he left the region and went back north.

But there is more here. He says a couple of times in John’s gospel that he only did what he was directed of his Father to do. Other places in scripture say that he was lead of the Spirit of God. For instance, early on, when he goes into the wilderness for forty days after his baptism, Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that it was the Holy Spirit who directed this. I think it is Mark who even says that he was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit.

This is important to me because it gives me a window into how God lead his Son during his earthly mission. It might give me some clues about God’s leading also.

So I observe that he was pushed to do something because of adverse circumstances caused by his enemies. He was lead by circumstance. He must have believed that his Father, who causes all things to work out according to his will, controls circumstances. Systematic theology even explains pretty well that God has foreordained all that comes to pass, although he does it in such as way as to leave the limited free will of man unabridged. A clear example of this is Pharaoh in Exodus charging into the parted Red Sea to his death. He did this of his own free will, uncoerced, because God had manipulated nature to make Pharaoh think that acting in a certain was was to his advantage.

Anyway, the Lord was lead by circumstances.

But, based on the other things I mentioned above, he also responded to these circumstances by the leading of the Spirit and/or because his Father told him what to do.

So circumstance and the Spirit and his Father’s direction were how he was lead here.

I have had a very few times when I knew by the Spirit what I should do. But most of the time, I am pushed by circumstance to do what seems the right thing based on what I know at the time. But I trust that, if I walk with God, these circumstances will be fences to keep me on the path.

Sande

I had a rough night. For the second night in a row I had two patients, both of whom were extremely difficult to take care of.
Both are in a coma from brain injury.
Both have multiple wounds and sores which must be dressed.
Both are diabetic and require frequent blood sugar checks.
Both have gastric tubes for tube feeding.
Both are on respiratory assist.
Both have very serious bed sores which must be cared for.
Both have infections which are communicable by contact and so they are on isolation, meaning every time I went into the room, I had to gown up.
Both have lots of meds spread out so that every hour I needed to be in both rooms doing several things.
Both are incontinent of stool - you can figure out what that means for patient care.
Both had to be bathed and have their linens changed.
Both needed frequent mouth care.

Because we were short, I also had to take a third patient. Fortunately, she was stable with few issues to be addressed.

On top of all this, my fellow RN got a poor woman from a nursing home who came to the ER with intractable vomiting. He needed help with her.

However, none of this is what was difficult. I’m not usually this busy, but it happens sometimes. It is part of the job.

The reason the night was so hard was that early in the shift, as I sat looking at all the stuff I had to do and trying to organize it in my mind and on paper, an uninvited thought assailed me. I looked at the date on the computer screen, and suddenly realized that this time last year, I was going back and forth to New Orleans because my grand-daughter, Sande, was dying from ovarian cancer. She was only seventeen. She was my baby. When she was born, she had an incurable digestive tract disorder and almost died. But God intervened after the doctors had given her up, and in one afternoon she was healed.

I went to my son’s house as I did every day after work. I went to tutor my two older grand-daughters, and to hold Sande. I didn’t think she was getting enough attention. So, six days a week I spent two hours in the afternoon holding her with her ear to my mouth saying, “Paw Paw loves Sande.” Two hours a day. I wanted her to know. She was so sick.

So one Saturday I arrived to find Sande listless, almost unresponsive, and her fingers and toes were purple. I knew she was dying. I took her to my best friend, my adopted mother, who I called “my Little Black Mama”. She was an elderly black woman with whom I had become friends, best friends, intimate friends. And she knew God intimately. She helped me raise my girls. So I took Sande there and I said, “Mama, our baby is dying. I’m going to leave her here. I want you to take her to your church tomorrow morning and put her up on the altar and ask all those godly, praying women to lay their hands on her and pray for her healing.”

Up to this point, Sande had not been able to keep any nourishment down. We had to keep a bottle in her mouth 24 hours a day to keep her alive at all.

So Rete (the lady I am talking about) did as I asked, and brought her home. She called me later and said she was cooking beans on the stove, and when she got home, she poured off some of the pot liquor and fed it to Sande in a bottle. She kept it down. She took some milk and kept it down. From that time on, Sande could out-eat me. She was about four months old when this happened. When she was about two I stayed overnight, and she woke me early saying, “Paw Paw, I’m hungry.” She was pulling on me to get up and make her breakfast. So I got up and made her some oatmeal. And some more, and some more. I made her five packages of instant oatmeal. Then she looked up at me like a dying calf and said, “Paw Paw, I’m still hungry.” I said, “Honey, you’ve eaten everything in the house.” So then I had to take her to Huddle House and buy her breakfast.

I mean, when God healed her, He really fixed her good. She was like a vacuum cleaner with teeth. And she never got fat. Oi!

But in July of 2006, Sande started complaining about abdominal pain. But she complained about everything, so no one thought anything about it. By August, she looked like she had a full grown watermellon in her abdomen. The doctors thought it was a cyst. They scheduled surgery. They wanted an oncologist present just in case. About September 12, to our horror, this cyst turned out to be an ovarian tumor the size of a frozen turkey. She stayed in the hospital for a few days and went home. She was in intractable pain. Two weeks later was the return visit appointment with the oncologist to decide on a course of action. I drove to New Orleans to be present at the appointment. Sande had told the doctors that she wanted me in on everything because, “Paw Paw will make sure everything is done right.” When I got to the house, she was in horrible pain. I broke down and cried. I tried to refrain. By the time we saw the doctor, she was just miserable. He admitted her right away. They started her on a pain drip. The pain just got worse day by day. I was back home, but was in touch by phone.

For a week she was so drugged, most of the time she could not converse. But she would tell me that when she got better, she wanted to come visit me for a long time so we could sit on the back porch and talk about a lot of things. I knew that would never happen.

Then I got a call that she had been taken into emergency surgery. They had transfused about a dozen units of blood and her hemoglobin would not come up. When they opened her abdomen again, they found tumors growing like toadstools all throughout her abdominal cavity. And they were bleeding. Why wasn’t God healing her again this time. What was the point of the first healing when she was a baby? I don’t know. I left for New Orleans straight away.

I got there a couple of hours post-surgery. She was stable enough that they were about to take her off the vent. I made them wait until her father got there -- just in case. But she came off alright. But her pain level was so high that they had to knock her out to keep it under control. When she was still awake, she told me she did not want to die. What could I say?

I had the sorrowful job of telling her father that he should sign a do not resucitate order and, unless there was marked improvement, should refuse chemotherapy, because it would only prolong the agony.

Hours turned into days. She sunk further and further. I did some nursing care on her that the staff nurses just did not have time to do. I waited with the family. I went back and forth to my room at the inn attached to the hospital. On the last day, I started checking her urine output every hour. I could tell we were winding down. At about two p.m. she started to turn blue and cold, even though she was still breathing. At five p.m. her urine output was only five mililitres. I told them to go get her father, that she was about to go. At five forty-five she expired. She had lived just less than a month after the first surgery and only a few days after the second.

And where was God? Well, He was right where He was when His Son died at the hands of His enemies -- brutally, mercilessly, vengefully. And I think that, since I taught my girls to know the Lord from the time they were born, that He will raise her up on the last day as He raised up His Son.

But that does not help my feelings. It does not make me feel any less disemboweled, any less cut down.

And I have hoped all year that when this time came around, I would not be stalked by these unbidden memories.

But as I sat trying to organize my patient care (remember that way back when I started this?) these things, like a banshee riding a black horse, came screeching, galloping through my mind.

God hath not promised
skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways
all our life through;
God hath not promised
sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow,
peace without pain.

But God hath promised
strength for the day,
rest for the labor,
light for the way,
grace for the trials,
help from above,
unfailing sympathy
undying love.

Helen Steiner Rice

Friday, September 21, 2007

The Offensive God

I spend much of my time thinking about irrational kinds of faith. The reason being that Biblical Christian faith is completely rational. It is evidential. This is not to say that everyone believes the evidence. But facts are just facts whether anyone accepts them or not.

It is like not believing that the Declaration of Independence was ratified on July 4, 1776. Fine. Don’t believe it. Make up a conjectural story of how it came about. Rant and rave and stomp your foot and insist that your conjecture is “history”, that is is “scientific”. That people who take the document literally are “Neanderthals.” You might persuade a lot of people. You might get your view taught in the school system to the exclusion of the historical, documented, position. By only allowing one view to be taught, and by castigating, excluding, or firing those who present the evidence against your position, eventually your little story may come to be accepted as true “because so many people believe it.”

But your little story is just that. You might as well include “The Three Little Pigs” in a textbook outlining the history of home architecture. Your little story is not true. The documentation and the principles of evidence are all against you. The “faith” in the historical events stated in the document (The Declaration) is a rational, evidential faith. The “faith” in your little story is contra-rational and contra-evidential. It is the kind of faith that Mark Twain meant when he said that faith is believing in something that you know damn good and well is not so. He actually aimed this little remark at Christianity. It actually applies to all of Christianity's rivals including Evolutionism (which is a faith).

The particular belief that I though about this morning while I was doing some patient related task, was the Atheist belief, or the Atheist Faith. I was listening to someone say that human suffering is one of the strongest arguments atheists use to show there is no God. But that only amounts to saying there is no god like the one they imagine there would be if they were God.

An aside: This complaint assumes there is something wrong in the world. But if the Atheist believes that there is no Creator, and that the world is just the product of random chance events over time, then it he can’t say something is wrong. He would just have to say something is. But there would be no distinction about things being right or wrong in any sense. Some atheists have tried to argue for morals starting from their position. But these arguments are only circular reasonings that come out to pragmatism. So there is no difference, absolutely, in whether I help a crippled person or kill him. What ever is expedient to the person who has the most power is “right” at that moment for that person.

So, back to my thought, if one rejects the Atheist proposition and concludes the obvious, that there is an all powerful, all wise Creator, then what does the existence of human suffering say about Him?

If we are, as the Bible says, rebels against God, unclean, unthankful, sinful, evil in the very core of our nature, then the answer should be repugnant to us.

And it is!

The Biblical answer is that these things are an expression of God’s wrath. They are perfectly just. God is not giving anyone any grief that is not the just portion of every one of Adam’s children. In this light, what does all the good and beauty in the world say about this God? It says that He is merciful, and that for the most part, He is holding His wrath in patience. The suffering that appals us is both a warning of wrath to come, and an opportunity to do righteousness on God’s behalf.

The fact that this answer wins no popularity contest is an indication that it is true. “There is none righteous, no, not one, there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone away, they are together become unprofitable, the poison of asps is under their lips. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Yep, that’s me. It’s us. All of us. How unflattering. And if we don’t admit it, we are also liars.

However, the scripture goes on to say that although the wages of sin is death -- the loss of eternal life, the free gift of God is eternal life in the world to come through the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. (All of the above paraphrased from Romans chapter 3.)

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Wrought in God

I’m reading the Greek text of John’s Gospel. I do this kind of thing both to keep up my language skills and because it forces me to think about what I am reading. I find, when reading the English Bible, that my mind wanders. Reading in another language forces me to pay closer attention.

I was snagged as I was reading John Baptist’s statements in chapter three. I need to put together a chronological collection of John’s statements and study the theology contained in them. His ministry was short, only about a year and a half. His purpose was to prepare the way for the coming Christ of God. In the prologue to John’s Gospel, in verse seven (chapter one) it is stated that John was the means by which “all should believe” on Jesus Christ. John’s short ministry prepared the men who were to become Christ’s Apostles. They were all disciples of John first.

But what snagged my attention in chapter three was this statement: “He that doeth truth cometh to the light (Jesus Christ) that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.” And here is what grabs me: that one comes to Jesus Christ because his works are already “wrought in God.” What does “wrought in God” mean? As one, Bill Shakespeare, said, “There is the rub.”

The phrase appears with “God” in the Dative case. The translators of the English Bible have left it in exact English verbal equivalence, giving the reader the opportunity to think it out. But the Dative case has several uses in Koine Greek:
1. It can be a dative of means: “wrought by means of God.” I use God to help me accomplish good works.

2. It can be a dative of instrument: “wrought by God.” God uses me as the instrument through which he ac complishes good works.

3. I could be a dative of reference: “wrought in reference to God” or “wrought toward God.”

4. It could be a dative of manner: “wrought with God in mind.”

For the first two, I looked to Jerome. In his Latin translation, he translates it “in Deo.” This is either the Latin dative or ablative. If it is Latin dative it equals #2 or #3. If ablative #1. However, both cases are spelled the same. So Jerome did not help me. It is a judgement call.

I got into an argument with one of my Greek professors once about a similar problem in another phrase of John, “The love of God.” It is impossible to determine for sure if this is a subjective or objective genitive. Does it mean “God’s love” or does it mean “love for God”? My argument was that if the Scriptures are the words of God, then when God is ambivolent, He is so for a reason. It means both.

That’s kind of my position here. If one were hearing the author say this phrase, there might have been something in the voice inflection that would give a clue. But written texts are a little short on specific voice inflections. So here is what I think the force of the passage means:

In coming to Jesus Christ in faith, as the Light of God in the world, I do so in order that my deeds may be shown, that they are wrought by God through me, wrought by me with God’s help, toward God, with God in mind. But this all evidences that God has worked in me first by His Spirit, in order that I may be enabled to come to Jesus Christ. “No man can come to me,” Jesus said, “except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him.”
(John 6:44)

I love God, then, only because He first loved me. (I John 4:19)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Meditation over a colostomy bag

I was watching something on TV this morning while I was changing a dressing on one of my patients.

This young man was saying that he believed that chemical evolution is the explanation for the universe and life. He said that he does not believe there is a God because he has never seen any evidence that there is.

I though to my self what I might say if I were talking to him. And here is what I would say. It came to me like an epiphany. I would say -- Don’t miss this:

"You’ve never seen anything else."

How simple. But this is true.

The Bible says that Christ is the light that illumines every man coming into the world (John Chapter 1). And Paul states that two things are true in this regard: One, that God had made creation so that it and all in it demonstrate clearly to the reason that there is an eternal and all powerful God. And two, that in addition to this, God goes to the effort to deal with every man’s thoughts in order to make this known. (Romans Chapter 1)

In other words, every man, that is, every member of Adam’s race, all of us, know both by reason and immediate illumination from God, that He exists, and that we and all we see are the works of His hands, and that we are accountable to Him for our life and deeds.

We know it whether we admit it or not. And if we resist this knowledge, or turn away from it, we do so with knowledge, so that we shall be inexcusable when we stand before God to give account of ourselves.

This is our dilemma. We are in rebellion, with knowledge, against the true God. No one is innocent. We are all guilty. We are all "miserable offenders" in the words of the Book of Common Prayer. We are rightly condemned before the righteous Almighty God.

It is against this hopeless plight that God extends to us complete righteousness as a free gift. He exchanged the sinless life of his Holy Son, counting Him a sinner, and arranging for His execution as such. And He offers to us, as a bookkeeping entry against our indebtedness, the Righteousness which His Son really had, even though He was counted a sinner. He offers this to all who will embrace His Beloved Son by believing on Him. And then, on that basis, just as He saw His Son a sinner, He sees one who believes on His Son, Jesus Christ, as fully righteous, even though he is not.

All this thought out over a colostomy bag dressing.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Counterfeit vs. Genuine

I was talking with someone about a mother whose child is dying of cancer. The mother is a health care professional, but did not recognize the symptoms early enough, and before the cancer was diagnosed, it was too far gone to stop. So this child is dying. S/he is rapidly losing weight, a limb has been cut off up to the joint where it joined the body, The tumors have invaded every organ, and is consuming most of the nutrition that can be gotten in. The parents believe God is going to heal the child and refuse to make the child a “No Code” status. No Code status means that if s/he were to experience cardiac or respiratory arrest, no effort would be made to resuscitate the child. S/he would just be allowed to die. Poor, suffering child. Poor, suffering parents.

This kind of thing always makes me wonder where the “Faith Healers” are? I think frequently about the difference between what is recorded in the Gospel accounts of the healing miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and what is on “Christian TV”. And here are the differences I think about:
1. When Christ and/or His Apostles performed a healing miracle, it was always in front of witnesses who knew the person who was healed. And, invariably, it was an ailment which was visible, or the symptoms were visible. In this way, all the witnesses to the miracle knew the person who was healed, the previous condition, and saw a visible, touchable manifestation of a real healing. These are the things that are ideally necessary by the laws of evidence in a court of law to establish a fact: That something happened, that there were eye witnesses, preferably many, most of whom were reluctant to believe anything confirmatory to the claims of Jesus, and many of whom were hostile, who actually saw a visible malady change and become normal as a result of something that Jesus Christ or one of His appointed agents (the Apostles) did or said. And, in this case, the event observed, is known to be impossible, and hostile witnesses are among the observers. In many cases, the statements of the hostile witnesses are recorded. I can’t think right off where any attempt to say that the miracle did not happen (because there were too many witnesses who knew the case before and after) even though they did resist the meaning of the miracles. All these things together confirm that Jesus Christ was in fact the Son of God, or that the Apostles were in fact His appointed agents to continue His work and doctrine after His return to the Father.
But when the televangelist/healers hold these healing services, the people who are allowed to come up before the cameras are strangers. And they are always healed of something that cannot be objectively verified by the onlookers. The closest thing I have seen to something observable is when someone comes up in a wheel chair or some other assistive device, and is supposedly able to get up and walk. The healer coaxes the subject and the audience so that the power of suggestion and the emotion of the moment persuades the audience, who already wants to believe this, that the person was completely incapable of walking at all, and now can walk normally. As an RN, I have seen plenty of people who can walk short distances reasonably well. The fact that they go about in a wheel chair does not prove that they cannot walk. So I have never seen an event at one of these meetings where there are unbiased, preferably hostile witnesses who knew the subject before, who have no element of suggestablity (this leaves out family members in the case of an invisible healing) and where the subject has an observable illness which requires no medical equipment or medical skill to assess, and who, in the presence of such witnesses, undergoes an actual healing.
An example of what I mean would be that a person missing a leg has his leg grow back. A person who is in end stage cancer with all the discoloration and muscle wasting suddenly pinks up and fills out and grows a full head of hair. Stories from the televangelist about the woman who went home and supposedly recovered later don’t count. They are unconfirmed stories with no witnesses to the healing. Or this child, who would be presented on the stage before the audience and all the witnesses with a missing limb, and weighing fifty pounds, with black spots and yellowed, drawn skin. Then the televangelist would lay on hands and the arm would grow back in, the flesh would pink up and fill out, the spots would disappear, there would be no more pain, and the child would be obviously and completely recovered before all the witnesses, preferably some hostile ones.

2. The outcome for Christ and His Apostles as a result of these events is different from that of the televangelist healers. For Christ, this stuff wound up getting Him in trouble with the majority of the religious people of the day, accused of sedition to overthrow Caesar, and crucified. As for the Apostles, I was reading again one of Paul’s statements about how things were going with the Apostles as a result of their faithful witness to events and meaning of the life of Jesus Christ. Paul said, “ I think God has set us, the Apostles, last, as it were, appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake . . . we are weak . . . we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world and are th offscouring of all things unto this day.” This last phrase refers to the stuff you would scrape off the inside of your chamber pot (back when they were the potty du jour) during spring cleaning. In other places, Paul reflects that, in order to know Christ, he lost his reputation (a lofty one) and his possessions (he was wealthy), possibly a wife and children. In II Corinthians chapter 11, Paul talks about some of the terrible sufferings he endured as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. In a word or two, the neither Jesus or His Apostles became wealthy, famous, or powerful as a result of their ministry. This indicates that they really were what they claimed to be and that their message was historically true, factual and rational by the laws of evidence.

On the other hand, it only takes a little observation and some digging around on the internet to find out that the televangelists, though they probably never have a real bona fide, verified healing, live like kings. They have taylor made clothes. They live in palaces, and often have grandiose “prayer getaways” in the mountains or in some expensive overlook of the ocean.
They wear expensive jewelry. They have cosmetic surgery so they will “look like a man or woman of God.” (John Baptist wore a goat hair bathrobe with a leather bathrobe tie. As far as I know he didn’t shave, and probably was not a regular bather. Yet all of us who have believed the Gospel and have been saved have done so because of John’s ministry.) They claim to be God’s agents, and they frequently claim that they prophesy as spokesmen directly from God. When they talk, they sound like God stops by for coffee and doughnuts every morning to give them the rundown on the day. But they don’t suffer, they are not deprived, they are certainly not like the scraping of a chamber pot. They do rake in millions of dollars into their own pockets which are given by well meaning but deceived people who can ill afford to give money, but who are told if they give sacrificially “to support this ministry” God will meet all their needs. Well, that is another argument. But, in summary, they do what they do because it is lucrative. It is also cruel to their constituants. As far as I can tell, God prospers one who works and saves and lives frugally and who give to the poor. The televangelists are not poor.

Well, I’m rambling. My point is: that which passes for Christianity in America today on Christian TV for the most part, in my opinion, is Christian in the same way that counterfeit money is money. It only appears, through careful screening and crafting, to be a continuation of the Apostles’ work. But it really makes the Gospel appear, to thinking people, ridiculous. And it fosters the assumption that people who believe the Bible and are Christians are not very bright and practice the kind of faith that Mark Twain defined. It is attrubuted to him that he said, “Faith is believeing something that you know damn good and well is not so.”

However, that recorded in the Gospel accounts and the rest of the New Testament documents meets the requirements of the laws of evidence. The proclaimers thereof not only did not get glory, honor, wealth and fame, but they suffered. Conclusion: that the witnesses in the New Testament were telling the truth. The televangelists are presenting something that is undermining the message of the Gospel and making it look like make-believe religion of the opiate class (Karl Marx: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”) Moreover, the cruelty shows up in this nice mother who is unable to accept that in a fallen world, people, even our dear children, die gruesome deaths, and God is not going to heal them. This does not mean God is not interested, or that He does not love. It means He has declined the request for healing for His own secret reasons.

Nevertheless, the Gospel and the evidence for it presented in the documents of the New Testament are true. Any who wish to bow before The Living Lord Jesus Christ as Saviors and forgiver of his sins, let him do so.

“Let us press on to know the Lord. As surely as the rain he shall come.”
Love,
Wes

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I like Thomas. I mean, I really LIKE Thomas! This guy always gets a bad rapp. He is usually attached to an epithet that I don’t think he deserves. This is the guy in the New Testament who usually is called “Doubting Thomas”. I think he should be called “Thinking Thomas”. He was one of the twelve. He was faithful to Jesus all throughout his ministry. He was one whose feet our Lord had washed. He was one of the fellows whom Jesus chose, after having prayed all night to his Father, to be Apostle-Prophets -- the special instruments whom He would send into the world to establish and publish the Christian Faith. But he wasn’t present, according to the testimony of the eye witnesses, at the empty tomb on Resurrection Morning. He had put his reputation on the line and had given about three years of devotion to one who wound up being crucified, an abomination to a Jew (“Cursed is every man that hangeth on a tree.” Deuteronomy 21:22; Galatians 3:13). He had run away from it all in fear and disappointment. And now, he was being asked to believe that Jesus was alive again, bodily risen from the grave. He didn’t want to believe something ridiculous. He must have been wondering how he was going to cobble his reputation with the Jews and his business back together and get on with his life. This account is in John chapter 20.

But the thing about Thomas that is so important to me is that he said “I will not believe unless I see evidence. My belief, my faith, must be based on hard evidence.” Jesus gave him the evidence he demanded. You can read about it yourself. But he did not condemn him because he took this stand. He said, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed.” That is exactly why the others believed. They were all eleven (Judas being excepted) witnesses to the death of Jesus Christ, and now they see Him bodily alive.

Thomas is mentioned once again in Acts chapter 1, but afterward fades into the background. But tradition says he went to the East preaching and establishing churches. He wound up in India where he was eventually killed for his testimony. Whatever the details are, his witness to Jesus Christ and His message was the same as that of the other apostles. I say this because in the Lord’s prayer for these chosen instruments, He asks the Father to make them one, even as He and the Father were one. And in John chapters 13-16 He says things to these men like, “I have chosen you” to accomplish certain things. “I have ordained you” to do these things etc. He states that He will accomplish his purposes through their agency after He returns to the Father. He even indicates in several places that when they would ask God for something in carrying out their commission, they would do this because both their asking, and the answer would have been previously ordained by God. Or that when they made a decision, the decision would actually be Christ working through them to continue and establish the work He had begun. (Matthew 18: 19-20 for example.) All that tells me that from the beginning our Lord chose Thomas as an instrument by which to accomplish His will, and that He did just that. But one of the things He used in Thomas was his refusal to “just believe” apart from evidence.

The statement “Faith is believing something that you know damn good and well is not so.” has been attributed to Mark Twain. In other words, in this view, Faith is non-evidential, contra-evidential, irrational. I agree that faith in astrology, Darwinism, world religions of what ever sort, are exactly this kind of faith. But this is exactly what faith in the Bible and its Christ is not. B. B. Warfield, professor of Polemic Theology at Princeton in the nineteenth century said that faith in the Bible and in Christ is “confidence based on evidence.” This is what Thomas wanted. This is why I like Thomas.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

I hate to write. But this is important.

I have started this Blog thing because I feel I have something important to say. And I spend a fair amount of time saying it in various iterations, usually across the table from someone who asks me about my Christian Faith. However, Gentle Reader, I find writing an onerous task, unlike my friend, Mr. Cowart, who takes some kind of masochistic pleasure in it. But hopefully, by this means, I can say some things that will be helpful to someone. I am angered when I encounter persons in the Christian Ministry who are being employed to promote the doctrines of Christianity, as they are expressed in the Bible, who do not believe the Bible, and seek to undermine its authority. I find these mistake their schooling for an education, and thus tend to consider themselves above admonition or correction. I respect their right to believe what they wish. But to take a salary and all the other perks that go with professional ministry, and then to use this platform to undermine the Book that authorizes their job is dishonest. I think it amounts to malfeasance of office.

Well, enough of the grousing. I came to Christ as an honest Agnostic when I was about 17 years old. I was a suicidal philosopher trying to find a good reason not to commit suicide. I developed an ulcer from this. By reading from the classical philosophers and some of the modern ones, I discovered that they didn’t know either; they just wouldn’t admit it. God invaded my space one day and made Himself known to me in a way
that answered my questions. Since that time, I have had an interest, almost an obsession, to understand for myself and to explain to others why the Bible is trustworthy, and why the Christian Faith should be believed. I think it would be ridiculous to believe in something that will not stand up to examination. However, if the Faith of Jesus Christ is what it claims to be, and if it tolerates the light of examination, then it is of eternal consequence whether one believes it or not.

When I post again in a few days, I want to start trying to explain some of that.

Thanks for reading,
Wes

Sunday, July 8, 2007

I finally got a new computer.

My name is Wes. I'm a friend of infamous blogger, John Cowart (http://www.cowart.info/blog/) who is to blame for inspiring me to start this thing. I don't like to write. He loves it. But I've always known there is something wrong with John. This does not speak well of me, because we've been friends since the 1970s.

Anyway, I have considered starting a blog as a way to reach out to many people from my study without actually having to go out and meet them and put up with them. I'm kind of a borderline misanthrope -- a nice misanthrope -- but a little socially awkward and introverted. However, the important thing related to the reason for this blog is that I am a Christian. I used to be an honest agnostic. But God Himself made Himself known to me when I was in my late teens. Since then my study of the Bible, and of religion vs. Bible Christianity has increasingly convinced me that the Bible is God's self revelation captured in writing by His enablement of chosen persons, and preserved through time by His Providencial protection so that we may know surely the things given to us by God through Jesus Christ.

And that is what I will write about: my thoughts, observations, ruminations, reasonings about why I think Apostolic
Christianity is reasonable and should be believed.

I welcome your feedback. Thanks.
Wes