I don't get it... or maybe I do.

I was thinking recently about the Problem of Evil. It is, perhaps, he greatest quandary of the Christian faith. I've read several books on the subjects and I'm sure I'll continue to study it in the future, but one thing I realize that amazes me continually is that I don't get it... And by that I mean, I can't get it. The Bible speaks quite clearly to this issue in both Job and the Gospels and the answer that God gives, however unsatisfactory, is that there are some things we just can't understand. And that may sound anti-intellectual, but its true nevertheless. The fact is that there are things out there that are fully incomprehensible, metaphysical questions that we will just never grasp. And at some point we need to embrace that. I don't mean we should stop funding science or anything like that. I just mean that at some point we must come to grips with the fact that we ourselves are not capable of understanding everything, that it is only intellectual arrogance to assume that all knowledge is within our grasp.

I think the event that prompted this little nugget of wisdom occurred about nine years ago, with the arrival of our first child. When Alyssa born and I held her for the first time, there arose within me a feeling that was hitherto unknown. It was the love of a father for his daughter. And I remember thinking at the time, "Oh, that's what they meant." It was at that moment that I finally understood what it was my parents had been telling me for 28 years when they said that they loved me. Up to that point my perspective on love had been limited to the understanding of a son to a parent. Now, I stand on the other side of that relationship and I can say with absolute certainty that it's completely different. Until I was a father myself I had no idea what my own father meant when he said that he loved me. I understand now, but I had to actually become something else to gain that insight.

On perhaps an even simpler level, consider this: what is it like to be a mother? I will NEVER know. I'm a man. I can talk to mothers. I can try to serve a mothering role to a child, but I will never go through a pregnancy or give birth. I will never develop the bond that a mother has with a child she has felt grow inside her body. I cannot understand. No man can.

Anyway, my point is that I had to BE a father before I could understand the whole measure of a father's love. One who is childless simply cannot get it. Oh, sure, there is some limited understanding, like seeing a bride through her veil though, it's not the same thing. SO, without trashing science or philosophy or any other pursuit of knowledge, when it comes to God's response to the problem of evil, I get it. I understand why the Bible doesn't offer a likable explanation. It's not that God can't explain it, its that we're too dumb to understand it. And, yes, that's a gross oversimplification, but the point is made: There is a realm of mystery we just can't unravel, and the answer to the problem of evil often dwells in that realm.

And I realize that might be incredibly frustrating for some people. What makes it okay for me personally is the knowledge that even though I don't always get it, sometimes can't get it, I know that God can get it, does get it, and is on my side. I don't have to understand every evil that happens around the world, or even to me personally, because I serve a God who is good and who will ultimately take care of it, even if I die before justice is served.

In the end, I don't enjoy ignorance on these matters, but neither do I fear it. Evil is still evil, and we should always try to understand the world around us, but let us not be so arrogant as to assume that the answers are ours for the having. Sometimes they're just not...

What must I do...

A friend recently asked me a great question about salvation. She wanted to know what the minimum is that a person needs to believe to be saved. Her point was that there are a lot of people out there calling themselves Christians that tend to believe that salvation rests in, “Jesus and.” Jesus AND baptism. Jesus AND good works. Jesus AND sacraments. Jesus AND having a bus load of kids so you can populate your own planet after you die…

Honestly, it’s a hard question to answer. I mean, who wants to be the one who says that someone is or isn’t going to heaven based on a conjunction? And frankly, I have a lot in common with a host of those folks. Still, it’s an honest question that deserves an honest answer. So, here it is. Simply put, Jesus saves. Jesus alone saves. I think where most cults and false religions go wrong is with the conjunction of faith and works. “Jesus and,” is a killer. There is no "AND." There is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Not Jesus and baptism. Not Jesus and good works. Not Jesus and populating your own special planet. Not Jesus and any other thing. Just Jesus. "Jesus and," means that I'm not really depending on Him for salvation. He's just helping me out a bit. But that's a theological crock of pooh. When I was an undergrad at the University of Oregon, my campus minister put it to me this way, "Jesus isn't my crutch, He's my iron lung." I like that. It shows how silly it is to think that I have anything to do with my own salvation, which is what all those “Jesus and” people want to think.


At the end of the day though “Jesus and” is really only subtraction by addition. “Jesus and” teaches that Jesus Himself is not enough to save us. It subtracts from the power of the cross by adding some other prerequisite for admission into God’s presence in Heaven, which is totally bogus. Jesus is pretty explicit in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” He didn’t say that He is one of many ways, or part of the way, or the way for some people but not others; He is THE way. The only way. “Jesus and” implies that He’s not enough on His own. It implies that something else is necessary, something I supply, something I am responsible for. And that just isn’t true.

I think the real problem for all those “Jesus and” people out there is that they haven’t really put their faith in Jesus Christ. Oh, they say they have, certainly. But they don’t mean it the same way that the “Jesus only” people do. You see, their understanding of who Jesus is is fundamentally flawed. They make Him less than savior and lord. They make him partially responsible for salvation, and I’m just not sure that’s enough. As I read the New Testament accounts of who Jesus is, I am struck by how totally clear it is that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and I just don’t think “Jesus and” fits that description. (I wonder if this could all be summed up by pointing out that Jesus is THE Christ, the Messiah, the one who saves. You can believe in some dude named Jesus, but if your Jesus isn’t Christ, you’ve got the wrong Jesus.)


SO, I’ll stop short of condemning all the “Jesus and” people to hell. After all, it isn’t my job to determine their eternal destiny, BUT I will say that I’m pretty I’m glad I’m not the one who has to face God the Father and explain why I don’t believe that his Son’s death, burial and resurrection are insufficient for salvation and He should let me into heaven because I also got dunked in the right church, knocked on enough doors, and tithed properly.
Diatribe over.

Devo?

So, I'm reading through the Bible in a year, using the Chronological Bible (NLT) by Tyndale Press, and, yes, I'm a week behind. However, I noticed something interesting in my reading this morning. King David, at the end of his life, in his final instructions to his son Solomon who has already been named king and is sitting on the throne in Jerusalem, basically sets up two final "acts of justice." He tells Solomon to arrange the deaths of Joab and Shimea, both of whom deserved death much earlier, but received mercy from David to this point. What I found interesting was that in Psalm 4:4 David writes, "Don't sin by letting anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent. (The Chronological Bible lists most of David's psalms right after he dies, not knowing exactly when they were composed.) Anyway, I found it very interesting that David followed his own advice to keep silent, but I have to wonder if he let his anger control him. I mean, certainly, in the heat of the moment he was careful not to let his anger get the better of him (although lust is another story), BUT the fact that he his last words to his son include instructions to kill his former enemies leaves one guessing about his ability to let go of that anger. I look forward to getting back to the study and digging into this intriguing aspect of his character...

Jesus the What?

People often say about Him, "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I won't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Thank you, Dr. Lewis.