Guilty as Charged

In honor of Mother's Day...

It's interesting to look at this cartoon and see the truth in this for many people. Instead of a relationship being one of mutual respect and love, it is one of manipulation. It is sad because the desire is the same...to be loved, to be needed, to be appreciated. 

I think as kids we all feel a bit of guilt in regards to our parents. I'm not sure if it is a guilt laid upon us from the Holy Spirit or our culture/society, but none-the-less it is there. It is all those "I wish I would haves or wish I could haves" that we go to our own graves with and that our children will probably bear as well. 

I have been talking about Genesis 1-3 of late. And I posed a question to a seminary professor today. "What is the difference between guilt and conviction?'  When someone says, "I feel convicted about something," what does that mean? Are they saying that they feel guilty over something?" It could be in that context. It could be a synonym. It could be that conviction is the inner pricking of the conscience by God - good or bad - and innocence or guilt is established based on the evidence.  Here is where my conversation would like to take a turn. 

The normal pattern of thought would be, "I feel convicted because I

have violated a law of God. If taken to the holy courtroom, I would be found guilty." In our Protestant theology this is where Jesus comes in to play. I am guilty and yet Jesus takes my punishment. I believe this. I believe in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus for my sin. But then I sin again. And Jesus' precious blood covers me ...each and every time. 

But it keeps me in a guilt system. I am and will always be guilty and feel guilty over past, present, and future sins. 

What if we approached this differently? What if instead of starting at Genesis 3 where everything is broken and Adam and Eve are guilty...what if we start instead with Genesis 1 and 2. 

Humanity's history does not begin with the Fall. It begins with being made in the image of God - we are created to imitate and reflect our Creator God. 

What if we think in these terms rather than the guilt issue terms. When I sin it clearly is a violation of God's holy Law - the  law of the heart (Rom. 2) and the Law given to Israel. I am not denying this. But...we tend to forget that sin is also a re-imaging of ourselves. When we sin we move away from what we have been created to be and begin to image and reflect the opposite of God. Sin in not just transgressing the Law but moving away from our intended purpose - to be the very image of a holy God. In this case its not an issue of guilty or not guilty; its an issue of directionality and proximity. 

The questions become, "Are you heading toward the very purpose for which God created you - to be in His image?" "Or are you moving away from that image?" "If you are heading toward that image, where are you in proximity to that perfect image of Jesus?" 

Jesus paid it all for me and cleansed me with his redeeming blood.

It is no longer and issue of guilt but of image, reflection, nearness. Do I fail and return to sin in my life? More often than I would care to admit. But I'm on the continuum, and after I confess that reversal I press on toward the mark of the high calling of God - to be made in his image and likeness. 

I might still be convicted by the Holy Spirit but it will be because He is working on transforming me into the likeness of the Son not because He desires to confirm my guilt. 

And by the way...mom...I'll be sad when you leave this old broken world, but not guilty...O.K., O.K....I'll call more often...I'll try and visit you more often.... I'm a bad son. 

Innocence

Genesis 3:22, "And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 

"A group of sex education 'experts' has suggested that pupils should be taught in school about pornography, on the grounds that it is not “all bad” and can even be “helpful” to them.

Yes, you read that right.

The Sex Education Forum says in a new publication for 
schools that pornography should be taught in terms of 
'media literacy and representation, gender, sexual behavior 
and body image.'” [from the Philadelphia Trumpet - which I do not subscribe to theologically (Armstrongism) but who have some pretty sharp European culture watchers.] 

By the way this is to be taught to 13 and 14 year old young people.

What stupidity. 

My dad and I were in a paint store one day and one of the store employees heard that I had never been to a bar and had a good

"drink." He proceeded to playfully harass me until the Lord gave me a good lead into the conversation.

I said to the gentlemen, "Have you ever put your hand down a known rattlesnake hole?"

He said, "No...why in the world would I want to do something stupid like that?" 

"Nor have I," I replied. 

"I don't have to try something that I know is going to bite me in the end." 

The point was made with a smile. 

Where has our sense of innocence gone? 

In discussing this passage in Genesis with a brother in Christ he told me that he never really knew that anyone died until he was almost 9 years of age. 

I long for those days of blissful ignorance. 

Think about what it must have been like to be Adam and Eve: Living in Paradise, walking with God in the cool of the evenings, having your hands always produce the best yield, complete harmony with your world. You have no knowledge of evil or wicked things. 

It was how God created you to be. 

You have no knowledge of the destructive nature of pornography or war or famine or disease. You have no knowledge of what inhumanities man can do to humanity. 

It continues to be a lingering prayer and biblical hope for all things to be restored to their original innocence. 

I believe that is the blessing of the book of Revelation. Some day...some day soon, I hope...my Jesus will come and fully restore all things to the Father as they were in Paradise so many years ago. When John describes living with God he says that this is a place where there is no tears, no sadness, no death. This is a place of restored innocence. It's why its called "Heaven." 

I think we are in store for a world described aptly by the prophet Isaiah - where people call good evil and evil good. We have lost our moral boundaries but...more than that, we have lost our moral compass. Our world has acquired what the Apostle Paul deemed "seared consciences" and "gods of their bellies." It represents stupid decisions by school boards to allow such things. 

Yes...I know that some kids are having sex before they are 12 years old. It's the same old mantra of "they're going to do it anyway so we might as well keep them safe or teach them appropriately." 

How about saying, "It's wrong. It's not what God wants for you. Don't give up what God has graciously given you by way of your innocence." 

I'm not talking about naivete. Naivete will not help you navigate your world but you don't have to participate in it. 

Don't lose hope. It must get worse before it gets better or should I say, "It must get worse before it becomes perfect." 

Perhaps the Lord will grant us a little returned innocence in the meantime, if only in our minds. 

Live in hope and keep your hands away from known rattlesnake holes. 

Eternal life?

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men: yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."  (Ecc. 3:11)

There is a longstanding debate on whether God intended Adam to live for eternity or whether he had the ability to live for eternity. It's rather a mute discussion in my opinion. The answer is "yes." 

Adam was made in the likeness of God. However, in biblical anthropology we tend to bypass the  communicable characteristic of the imago Dei (image of God) that deals with His eternality. God is eternal in his being. By created nature and design, we too, are eternal beings. Eternal in the sense that from a given starting point (which differs from God) we will live into eternity.

If you remember the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, they were tempted by Satan, sinned, hid from God, and then cursed. 

The consequence of that disobedience was given to Adam by God in Genesis 2:16-17. "In the day that you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die."

Now they ate but they didn't drop over dead. What died at that moment? Healthy relationships. Their relationship with God was broken in the sense that they had ceased imaging God in his perfection and glory.  Their relationship with each other was broken. Their relationship with the created world was broken. 

The important part of this conversation was a follow-up Trinitarian conversation that is found in Genesis 3:22: "And the LORD said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 

Was man created to live for ever? It appears that the means for that was provided in the garden. It was actually a gracious act of God that he kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden for if they would have eaten from the tree of life they would have lived in perpetual brokenness before God. 

God did intend for us to have eternal life. Jesus came to reconcile this world to the Father through his own tree of life. 

Because of the Fall and because of Jesus every person born has eternal life. But I'll leave you with the words of the prophet Daniel to describe it. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake:  some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dan. 12:2). 

I wonder how this would change our thinking if we truly believed that people will, indeed, live forever? Per the Scriptures, that destination is made in this brief span of life so how does this bring a sense of immediacy to how we view others in our realm of influence?

Thoughts to ponder.  

Adversity

"..the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground..."

I've been musing on biblical anthropology of late because of my interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (all varieties). This passage caught my attention this week. 

Most of the time my mind runs to the Ex Nihlo creation (out of nothing). In other words, the power of God's mind, coupled with his word and will brought into existence everything that exists. But with man he chooses a different method. He takes the dirt that he has created, holy and good, and the text tells us that he formed a man. 

I never really pondered the care with which God chose to bring humanity into this world. He could have spoken him into existence like the heavens but he chose to use something more personal. In fact, all breathing things were formed out of the ground (Gen. 2:19) with the exception of woman. 

The word "formed" in this text is the word used of a potter or a

wood carver. I can't help but think of Michelangelo and the statue of David. One day someone asked him how he took a block of marble and produce something so wonderful. He said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."

The last two weeks I have had some unusual adversity in my life, much of it self-imposed. We bought a home in Newberg and I had the bright idea of taking out all of the upstairs carpet and replacing it with high end lament flooring that looks almost indestinguishable from wood. 

I tore through the carpet and padding like a ferocious 20 year old. The next day I felt like a sore 40 year old but determined. A week on my knees and not only did I confess that I was 50 but felt more like 80. I am now heavily invested in muscle creams and am searching for a heating pad that will give me second degree burns. 

The floor went down pretty easily but the molding...I know that there is a statue in here and God is chipping away. It hurts. It tests my resolve. It tests my humility. It exposes my pride. It manifests my love. It displays my weaknesses. It went to the core of my deepest fear - not knowing how to do something - feeling stupid. 

The Lord brought me back to my seventh grade geometry class. I am so sorry Mrs. Dunkel for not paying attention in class. I am haunted by the phrase, "I'll never use this stuff." Even then I was more concerned about angels than angles. 

If I am truly made in the image of God, then perhaps I should consider these times of adversity to be the potter pressing in to my life. His hands are divinely reshaping me into a more accurate picture of who he is and what he wants me to be. 

I wonder if it will ever get easier to be thankful and hurt at the same time? 

A Point of View

Genesis 1:26-28, "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image,

in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 

This week I would like to begin a conversation that surrounds a different evangelical worldview. 

A worldview is a way that we are socially fashioned by all the educational elements around us [parents, grandparents, neighbors, other children that we may grow up with, the schools that we attend] that give us an understanding (right or wrong) about how our world works. It is what is assumed. 

I'll take a third nation worldview to help us understand this. For example, in some African countries you don't build a house under certain trees because that is where a certain powerful spirit lives. You don't leave your well uncovered at night because evil water spirits come up at night and rob the spirits of those in the village as they sleep and take them down the well. 

As Americans we think this non-sense superstition. We ask, "How is that possible?" The answer:  From their perspective you are the  one who needs to get a reality check. Everyone knows that this is true. There is no asking "why." It just is. 

A worldview is the basis for all we think and do. It governs our belief system, our value system, and our actions. 

In regard to Christianity, one missions author has stated that if you do not change the worldview of a person, they end up with syncretism - adding Jesus to their other gods. It is actually a false conversion because there is no real transformation [this will be my larger point].

In relationship to this, I would like to challenge the Western Protestant worldview that a salvation conversation begins with sin and the cross. 

I think the Jesus "event" is actually in the middle of our conversation and that we actually should be taking people back to Genesis 1 in order to truly reach them for the kingdom of God.

Starting with sin, in my opinion, makes the redemptive story solely about Jesus dying so that I don't go to Hell. It would be very easy to embrace this "act' without following through on the total transformative work of God. 

I had a brother tell me that he asked a Buddhist if he believed in Jesus. He said, "yes." My brother then asked if he believed that Jesus died for his sins. He said, "Yes." So my brother said, "So you are a Christian." He said, "No." 

Do you see the problem? A belief in a set a propositions did not change the worldview of this person. He still held on to his pagan worship but simply added Jesus. 

Rarely does anyone tell me that Jesus died so that I could become, through the transformative work of the Holy Spirit, what I have been created to be - a man created in the image of God for eternal fellowship.

I would love to hear what others may think about starting our

evangelism conversations with the fact that a Creator, who we call God, created us in his own image, in his own likeness, and for relationship. 

Let's just pause and consider that wonderful act and gift. 

Distractions

It was the Saturday night before Palm Sunday. We went to bed around 11 p.m and I was thinking, "I get to sleep in a bit tomorrow." Our church suspended our Sunday School hour due to Spring Break so I gained an hour of sleep. At least this was my hope. Around 7:30 I heard this incredibly loud sound - like a jack hammer on something metal. I had heard this sound before and  rushed outside to see if the same scenario was true. A woodpecker was diligently trying to bore his way into my chimney flue to find his breakfast. Yes, its round but that's about all the resemblance to a tree that it has. Perhaps it was God's way of graciously distracting me from the stress of the week or to get my behind out of bed to be with Him in prayer rather than get that extra hour of sleep. 

I had the unfortunate obligation this week to sit in on a very long meeting speaking to the moral failure of a brother in ministry. At the height of its intensity a frog let out a huge sound from the corner of the room. There was an open window and he must have been eavesdropping. It was so loud that it stopped the meeting. One minute the room was heavy with pain; the next we were trying not to laugh out loud. Perhaps it was God's way of graciously

distracting us and reminding us that the world around us is still moving forward. Perhaps we were making things more difficult than they needed to be. Forgive. Restore. Rethink. Restart. Resume. 

Holy Week can be pretty intense for me. There is a lot to do. The self-imposed pressure to be our best as a church - to present the Christ show well - is overwhelming at times. I need to be reminded that the gospel is simple and doesn't need flash or spectacular performances. Sometimes it just needs to be a woodpecker or a frog - a distraction that diverts our attention to that which is simple but so profound, if only for a season. 

A Wondrous God

A week of struggling with a sinus infection, another week in doctoral classes, and I am back in the writing chair.

I am actually writing in the midst of a social methods and research class (bored) thinking of how God has and is answering prayer in my life. But I also write with a bit of mystery as to what is coming down my divine path.

When I travel I usually ask God to provide divine social encounters for me. It is my way of testing and affirming God's multitasking skills.

Deb and I were blessed to have some friends that drove down from Alpena, Michigan and who made the extra effort to pick us up at the airport in Chicago. On Sunday we met for a farewell luncheon and I was tasked to pick the restaurant. To go here…to go there…too many choices. I chose Red Lobster. I walked into the restaurant and who do I see? My aunt and uncle whom I have not seen for over seven years. I had just spoken of them before leaving Portland. I’m not a statistician but I think the probability extremely low of me living in the Portland area, flying home for a doctoral class, meeting friends from Alpena, and without expectation, being brought face to face with a beloved aunt and uncle, that by divine plan, I had thought about prior to coming.

I also look at my classmates and look at how God is answering prayer. One classmate and friend is a former missionary to China who is now in Jakarta, Indonesia. One classmate runs a seminary in Beijing and has been talking to me about the changes in China and working with Chinese Americans in Detroit. Another dear friend is from Chad and is in the States as a political refugee. 

I don’t know where these relationships will lead, but for me, it is evidence of God putting all these complicated human pieces together to form a divine plan. It strengthens my faith. When I pray I know that God will hear my prayer. It is a simple way that God displays his grace and his person to me.

I have yet to fly home at this point but I’m wondering what divine mystery is yet ahead of me. The open seat next to me or the wait in the airport, the person standing in the line for screening…who knows where these  relationships may lead. It certainly was a time where God displayed his sovereign hand in my life. I’m glad for the demonstration of the divine movement. It has created a stronger confidence that God has and will put me in the right place, at the right time, for the right divine purpose, to fulfill a particular plan. Oh…the wonder of God.