Since things of a qualitative nature cannot be proven by empirical means, it is futile to try to "prove" that God exists. However, my faith comes from careful thinking and examination of evidence which leads me to conclude that the God of the Bible is the only true and worthy God. I apologize immediately for all the faults of the past and present church. God gets blamed for a lot of things which are the fault of human mis-conduct. This does not change who God is. Check it out!
Want to start a dialogue on any of this? jhy@t-one.net
This links to a list of good books on these topics Books exploring matters of faith
This installment of my thoughts posted 4/23/98. Previous entries can be accessed in an archive file.
Quote of the Month- something I've read that I thought worth sharing
If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, "This is not dead,"
And fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says, "This is enou
unto itself-- 'twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for me."
Thought of the Month- my own reaction to some portion of Scripture
Reading things chronologically is a fetish of mine. Whenever I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia or the tales of Middle Earth I follow the time-order, not the order in which they were written. I'm also doing the same with my current Bible reading. For the gospels I am following the chronology as suggested in the Life Application Bible notes. (I would also recommend The Life of Christ in Stereo- an interwoven chronology of the gospels.)
At the beginning of the ministry of Christ is his baptism after which he is followed by Simon (renamed Peter) and his brother Andrew (John 1:35-42). No surprises here. So I always assumed that other references to their calling were parallel, but just out of sequence. Not so. Following the time line through familiar events: the wedding in Cana, clearing the temple, Nicodemus' famous dialog, the woman at the well, teaching and healing, we come to Matt 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-20. Jesus saw Simon and Andrew fishing, and also James and John. He calls them to follow him with the famous "I will make you fishers of men" offer. Huh? They had apparently wandered off to go fishing for fish after following him earlier. But this time they "immediately left their nets and followed him." OK, now they must be permanent disciples of Jesus. Wrong. A demon is cast out of a man. Peter's mother-in-law is healed. Jesus preaches and prays throughout Galilee. Then comes that dismal morning when Simon, Andrew, James, and John have had no sleep, and have also caught no fish. They are back to hoping for slimy osteichthyes , not Homo sapiens . Jesus tells them to cast the net one more time and then they have more fish than they know what to do with. Which is saying something for four guys dedicated to the fishing profession. Luke 5:11 ends the story; "So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him," AGAIN.
I have heard more than one sermon preached with the attempt to inspire people to leave everything for God, and never look back, like the disciples. Seems to me the truth is that they were looking back about as often as I do. Maybe they got hungry, or needed to pay the bills, or just slipped into the habits of a lifetime. Whatever. But instead of being discouraged when my good decisions refuse to stay decided, I can take heart in the fact that I'm in good company. Jesus loved those fickle guys. He just kept asking them to re-make the right choices. And he keeps asking me to do the same thing... Issues I thought were settled long ago re-surface under new circumstances and demand to be re-examined and settled again. Life is change and we have incomplete knowledge; God is unchanging and full of all knowledge. We can only make decisions based on as much of reality as we know at any one time. But Jesus calls us to keep following, again and again and again.
I discovered this week that another great disciple of Christ experienced this too. In The Road to Daybreak Henri Nouwen says, "It struck me that selling what you own, leaving your family and friends, and following Jesus is not a once-in-a-lifetime event. You must do it many times and in many different ways. And it certainly does not become easier." You said it, Henri.
Off the Wall- I like to explore wild ideas which are not essential to my basic faith, and which may not even be valid, but they are always thought provoking. Here's one for this month
Recycling is good. Recycling is GREAT. But this month I won't go off on an environmental tangent. I did get to thinking a while back about the truth learned in a Solid Waste Management class that we can't ever make things go away, we just move them around. (Well, we can transform them, or compartmentalize them. But I promised that this is not on environmental issues.) So I was thinking about the atoms in the universe. They get recycled constantly. The oxygen molecule I breathe in probably was transformed by a plant from carbon dioxide, which might have been released by a bacteria that ate a molecule of some nasty pollutant, which stole the oxygen from the water column in a stream, which incorporated it from the atmosphere, which.... Well, you get the idea. I read once that every atom in our bodies is exchanged over a 3-year period. I really am a different person than I was 3 years ago!
There is some mysterious way in which we are so linked to all of creation that our attitudes toward God affect the natural world. Obedience to God will allow the trees to "clap their hands," and the hills to "skip for joy." (Isaiah 35:1-8 has an example of the response of the natural world to holiness) But when we sin, rebel, act deceitfully, or worship other gods all creation responds with lowered production, lowered resistance to pollution. (Jeremiah 7:17-20 is one example) Creation also suffers in our judgment.
The physical, atomic, material parts of us are real. God's creation of them granted them a reality. But as noted above this material universe is totally fluid. Is my big toe made up of an atom of Betelgeuse, one of elm bark, and another of leopard spots? More to the point, is the Mississippi River made up of atoms of me, Jesse James, Billy Graham, the Unibomber, and of you? Do these recycled atoms somehow mystically carry the imprint of my spirit?
Can I literally make the world a holy, or a godless place just by the nature of the atomic fairy dust I sprinkle everywhere?