On the Existence of God
The recent happenings…
Well, it feels like it has been a long week, but I’m not really sure why. I’m actually trying to think of what I even did over the past week and I can’t really think of much. 
I’ve redone the office (as pictured) and I think it’s pretty sweet. It’s really quite amazing what the extra screen real estate let’s you do. Right now, I’m using Write Room to write my blog entry and I’ve got Terminal open with iChat and iTunes on the screen right next to me. It would be nice if the big LCD display that I’m using didn’t have a huge mark on it, but that’s ok. It’s better than being stuck at 1280×960 all the time.
I finally finished the first discourse of The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock, which is awesome and amazing. We organized the room, which was a complete and total disaster and it took us at least 2 or 3 days to complete because we just could never push all the way through it. I did some more biking, which is super enjoyable and energy conscientious. My bike is a bit of a disaster though, as it seems that almost every other ride something else breaks. This last ride my gear cable for the rear drive train decided that it was time to snap, so I had to get that replaced today which cost me a whopping 35 bucks. No fun!
My older sister now officially has a boyfriend!!! WOW!!! I’m so excited for her. Jesse seems like a really great guy and I’m just really happy for both of them. Katie has been wanting to really settle down (not that she was living a wild life before, but she just hasn’t really ever had a boyfriend that actually seemed like he would be a God given candidate for marriage) for a while now and I think that she is going to have a real testimony of God bringing 2 people together without much effort on either one of their part. I think that is how it should be. Eve was brought to Adam by God. It seems kind of destructive whenever we attempt to ‘hook ourselves up’ with each other.
Also, today I had a band practice! It was pretty insane and awesome and a great deal of fun. It’s been forever since I was in a pre-written band situation and it’s been a very long time since I was playing the bass (as I have only been playing the guitar lately) and it’s been an even longer time since I was playing any sort of hard music. Needless to say, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I showed up and my great friend Alan Popoli said, ‘OK, here’s your bass. Let’s start teaching you the song.’ So off we went. I think that even though I felt like I was hanging on by the seat of my pants most of the time, by the end of the night (we might have practiced for an hour, if that) I was actually doing pretty good. The music was awesome nonetheless. It kind of reminded me of very early Zao stuff (i.e. all else failed), which I love. Alan was alternating between singing and playing the guitar (at this point he couldn’t do both at the same time to well. I don’t blame, he was playing ridiculously complicated stuff as far as I’m concerned.), and his two buddies (who I hope are now my two buddies) Andrew (Guitar) and Nick (Drums) (hope I’ve gotten there names right, I’m horrible at that) were just rockin out. It’ll be a long time before I can start to move again (I can barely play bass :) ) but I think this could really be awesome. We’ll see where it goes.
So, like I said, it doesn’t feel like we did a whole lot this past week, but I’m exhausted nonetheless. However, I’m gonna try to get on to the meat of the post now.
Current Meditations
Recently, I’ve been being tag-teamed by two books that have really been rocking my world (not including The Book, which is always in the process of rocking my world). Probably about 6 or 7 months ago I was really feeling convicted that I was wasting my time with a lot of reading that I was doing. The fact is that most books that are out today that are ‘must reads’ will not be around in 100 years. It’s just how it is. Most of the authors that we think are really important today will have no lasting impact. History proves this. So, as Leonard Ravenhill, I believe, said (allow me to very loosely paraphrase), “Please don’t buy any book until it’s author is dead and buried and some measure of his or her life has been taken. Otherwise, you’re probably just going to be wasting your time.” I set out to fill my heart and mind with what has fed Christians for the past centuries, not the past year. I appreciate current ministries (I’m even fed very often by one called IHOP-KC as well as others), it’s just that stock has not been taken of their effects. There are huge numbers of books out there that I have never touched that are already proven. I figure that I should start there…
I went out and bought a bunch of Christian Classics; books such as The Imitation of Christ, The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, The Interior Castle by Saint Teresa of Avila, Finney’s Systematic Theology, Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. I’ve basically been working my way through them ever since, and man do they deserve to be called classics. In regards to the Bible I’ve been studying Jesus (specifically the book of John); in regards to books I’ve been studying God. The last time I was up at a OneThing Leadership Summit, Dwayne recommended a few different books but the only one I really felt lead to check into was The Existence and Attributes of God. You know how it is when you see something and you feel a little nudge towards it in your spirit from God. Anyway, I went to the book store and gave it a quick once over and decided immediately that I should buy it. It’s a really huge book and it’s very dense so it takes a lot of effort to read (as most good books do) but I’ve found every page to be totally worth it. I’m going to attempt to give you a little taste of Discourse Number 1 in the following few paragraphs and then we’ll sign off.
The Existence and Attributes of God - Discourse Numero Uno
As I said previously, The Existence and Attributes of God is a big long book dedicated to the long and loving meditation upon one subject, God. It contains 9 discourses (basically huge chapters) that are all about God. Something that the IHOPers have been saying lately is that the most neglected topic in the Christian religion is God. No one preaches on God. And yet he is the center of our faith. Everything is from him and to him and by him, and yet we do not study him, and we do not think about him, and we do not meditate upon him. I’m fully convicted by this statement. I want to get to know God. Let us proceed then
Discourse Number 1 is entitled ‘On The Existence of God’ and it centers around a discussion of the abject foolishness of not believing in a God (or higher power, or deity, or something supernatural). Charnock does not yet even really get in to whether or not we should study and behold and meditate upon the Christian God, he only proceeds in great detail to slam the atheist. I’ll list some quotes below.
For the first, every atheist is a grand fool… It is a folly; for though God be so inaccessible that we cannot know him perfectly, yet he is so much in the light, that we cannot be totally ignorant of him; as he cannot be comprehended in his essence, he cannot be unknown in his existence; it is as easy by reason to understand that he is, as it is difficult to know what he is.
The notices of God are as intelligible to us by reason, as any object in the world; he is written in every letter.
It hath been universally assented to by the judgments and practices of all nations in the world… The notion of the existence of a Deity was the same in all, Indians as well as Britons, Americans as well as Jews…’Tis so twisted with reason that a man cannot be accounted rational, unless he own an object of religion; therefore he that understands not this, renounceth his humanity when he renounceth a Divinity… It hath been owned by the wise and ignorant, by the learned and stupid, by those who had no other guide but the dimmest light of nature, as well as those whose candles were snuffed by a more polite education, and that without any solemn debate and contention.
There’s plenty more where that comes from, but I don’t even have time to get into it. At a later date I will publish some more thoughts on this book but for now I’ll just give you the broad strokes. Besides being a slam of the atheist, the first discourse serves as a meditation on the simple fact that God is, and the profound joy that simple fact should bring to us. I think that the chief thing that I have brought away from this so far is that I have become jaded in my education. This is something that Tozer and Charnock have done particulary well in their tag-teaming of me. Both of them, though they seem to be extremely intelligent men, have no fear of taking the humble road and admitting that we as humans know next to nothing.
Through my education I have allowed something as ridiculous and incomprehensible as a seed growing from germ to tree to pass over me as if it were something I could account for in my limited reasoning. I’ve been convicted anew that Science at its best is nothing but a highly detailed method of describing what we can see. We can truly account for nothing. We cannot answer any question that goes beyond “how would you describe what you are seeing?”. How does the tree grow? We can go as far as describing the little atoms interacting with each other but why do the little atoms work together? We can observe the things that happen most often and call them laws but why do the laws exist and what makes them constant? Just because we can see what happens does not mean we understand what is happening. It is man at his most arrogant when we look at the vast complexity of the world in which we live and say that we understand what is going on. It is evidence of the vastly depraved nature of the human race that we look at our universe and declare that chance did it. That declaration is rooted in the fact that we desperately want to be our own master. We desperately want to deny God.
I might say that Charnock’s main point in Discourse 1 is that belief in the existence of a God is NOT just an issue of faith. Belief in the Christian God is and can only come to us via revelation, but belief in a God that is some how controlling things providentially and keeping the universe in order becomes more and more obvious the more you think about the complexity of the world. I’ll attempt to quote Thomas Carlyle via Tozer here:
Thomas Carlyle, following Plato, pictures a man, a deep pagan thinker, who had grown to maturity in some hidden cave and is brought out suddenly to see the sun rise. ‘What would his wonder be,’ exclaims Carlyle, ‘his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight… This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all.’
How different are we who have grown used to it, who have become jaded with a satiety of wonder. ‘ It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty,’ says Carlyle, ‘it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it… We call that fire of the black thundercloud ‘electricity,’ and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.’
With that thought, I’ll close out for tonight and go have a wonderful sleep with my wife.
I love you guys!
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