Burning Ones

Posts in ‘Bible’

• Is God or the President Sovereign?

  From November 08, 2008 @ 2:30 pm

  [Edit] – To be clear, I wrote this in response to Dutch Sheets’s recent open letter responding to the elections published on 6-11-08. I would recommend reading that, as I feel it is a good example of what I think might be the wrong paradigmn towards God’s sovereignity.

  ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

  ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us… [Behind Bilbo finding the Ring] there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by it’s maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.’ – The Fellowship of the Ring: The Shadow of the Past.

  I’ve been struggling lately with the concept of God’s sovereignty in the context of these elections.

  Some background: For a long time I was what I will refer to as ‘pure predestination’. This means that, for lack of a better way to describe it, we are all essentially puppets under the hand of God and he is playing out a play with us, even though the puppet is not directly consciously aware of the puppeteer’s actions. This attributes absolute sovereignty to God and zero free will to us. Of course, the problem with that is that it flies in the face of experience completely and it also doesn’t seem to jive with several passages of scripture. That being said, I definitely believe that it does jive with several other passages and it is a very comforting thought. After all, the idea that ultimately you don’t have any real responsibility for anything that’s happening around you and in you (including your sin) is comforting if you attribute perfect goodness to the one who is controlling you. Ultimately, even if he were to send you to Hell, it would be OK, because the one who had made that decision is perfectly good. That’s ‘pure predestination’. Verses in support of this would be Romans 9-11, or Ephesians 1:3-10, etc.

  Then, I listened to a few things and met a few people that shook that belief (and ultimately gave the Bible more of a right to speak to me about who God is and how he works) and I became what I’ll refer to as a deterministic free will (that’s an awful word). This means that, if I take into account all of the scripture that I know of, I have to account for the fact that God clearly predestines people to either be in his family (saved and having their end to be with God for eternity, ascribing him glory and majesty and beauty and power, and dwelling in his everlasting love) or out of his family (unsaved and having their end in Hell and everlasting torment and separation from God, the end we all deserve but do not all receive because of the free gift of mercy). Another way to put this would be that some people are sheep and others are goats. A sheep cannot be made into a goat, and a goat cannot be made into a sheep. It’s just a non-issue. I can’t become a monkey. I can want to be a monkey, I could in theory probably even take some weird hormones developed by our intrepid scientific community and make some inroads towards becoming one. But ultimately I am a human, and that’s really all I’ll ever be.

  However, then on our side of things and from God’s perspective, things are somewhat up in the air. God has a plan, which is perfect and meant to bring about the greatest vision of his glory and the greatest good for the greatest number of people through the least amount of pain and judgement possible. How he accomplishes this is by partnering with us, who he has elevated to a level of dignity in our relationship with him that is really beyond comprehension. If we do not partner with him, his plans are delayed until he can find a person to partner with him to accomplish his purposes on the earth. Verses such as Ephesians 4:1 and Hebrews 12:1-3 and Romans 12:1-2 all seem to point to this willing in our lives to do what God has called us to do and partner with him. Of course, one of the most famous verses that proves this theory is Ezekiel 22:23-31, where God seems to lament the fact that he could find no man to stand in the gap between him and his people which caused him to have to pour out his wrath on them. Also, James 5:13-18 where we learn that Elijah was the cause (in partnership with God) of the drought and the ending of the drought that occurred during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel.

  Thus, deterministic free will.

  Lately, I would say that I’ve begun to swing back towards pure predestination. The reason is that I find it to be a fairly weak argument that is constantly thrown around that the reason a promise from the Lord didn’t come true is because ‘our faith failed’. In the prosperity movement, this concept rears its head in a particularly ugly way. The faith healer will pray and tell people that they’re seeing cancer, or osteoporosis, or blood clots, or heart conditions, and then they’ll tell the people that healing is available for those conditions and that if the person will only have faith, they will be healed. If it doesn’t happen, they don’t tell the person to go grapple with the fact that a sovereign god does not have to heal them nor does he promise in all circumstances to heal them nor is it the fault of Satan that they are sick in the first place but in fact the will of God nor that it may be that God wills for them to suffer that they might learn righteousness (as Jesus did) but instead that God wanted to but they were unwilling.

  It’s the convenience of it that bothers me. Instead of grappling with a God who for his own reasons and glory is willing to choose to send people to hell (I find no theological route around this, no matter what God has chosen to send people to hell. He made the rules in the beginning, he didn’t have to create a hell, so even if we chose in the end to violate laws that would ‘force’ God to put is in hell, it was still him in the beginning who gave us the ability to make that choice, so it’s still his choice ultimately that has us there) and yet is still perfectly good, we feel guilty and confused that our God who really wants us to be happy and healthy and all the rest has to partner with weak little us to get anything done. The blame and power are shifted to us irreversibly. We don’t deal with a God who, like Romans 9 says, created some vessels for honorable use and some for dishonorable; instead we implore those around us to ‘let God use them for honorable use instead of ‘forcing’ his hand to use us for dishonorable use’. That is a much harder challenge to wrap our hearts around.

  So, back to the elections. The issue I see is that I believe God is shouting to this nation that Abortion must come down. As his heart was set against slavery before the civil war, so now his heart is set against abortion. This is not to say that we couldn’t theorize that there are many other evils in the world. The way we (the church) treats the poor and needy in our world is appalling, and there will be judgement and answering for that behaviour. However, as God is sovereign, he has the right to focus on any given issue at any given time (as he could just as well choose to focus on all issues).

  As an aside, I believe the reason God focuses on an issue at a time is his mercy. If God were to confront me with all of the darkness in my life right now in one fell swoop, I would be killed. I simply cannot know how dark I really am. Instead, he deals with me in little steps on the progressive road to sanctification and unity with Christ. I believe the same holds true for a nation. If God were to come to America or Mexico or Russia or Africa and say, ‘This is everything I have against you’, the nation would be destroyed. OK, aside over.

  So, God is choosing right now to focus on the moral and social issue of the sanctity of pre-natal life. We condemn murder (the killing of a human being) in every circumstance (although even that has begun to be questioned in the case of euthanasia, which I have found a surprising amount of support for, and many people support capital punishment, and I believe to the conservatives everlasting shame many people who are ‘pro-life’ in the case of abortion are also pro-war, which couldn’t be much more pro-death) except the life that is still mostly in the womb (OK, maybe that’s a bit of barb against people who are OK with partial birth, but whatever. It’s a heinous act so I don’t mind vilifying it). We approach the definition of a human in all sorts of wonky ways so that we can justify aborting a ‘fetus’ while still not feeling foolish when we congratulate and expecting mother on her ‘new baby’ and ‘little life’. Who among us would look at a mother, flushed with joy at the prospect of her little baby coming, and straight faced tell her, ‘well you don’t actually have a baby yet, it’s just animated tissue without any real substance. Don’t get excited till it’s all the way out of you because, you know, then it’s an actual baby.’ That is the issue on God’s heart. 50 million babies, killed in the name of convenience, health, and freedom.

  Now, we had two candidates for this election, as you all know. Barack Obama is pro-choice to an extreme. He has been very candid about this (a fact for which I thank him. If politicians could just be honest about their beliefs and stop with the theatre of neutrality I think our country would be in a vastly healthier state.) and his voting record backs up his claims. John McCain couldn’t really be classified as pro-life, but he certainly would not have done anything to strengthen the pro-choice agenda. On most other issues, I think I actually agree with Obama. I am for reform in the government, I am probably more socialist leaning than is actually good for me, and I like the idea of the rich giving back to the country that made them rich in a meaningful way. Of course, I understand that this is a gross simplification of his policies and probably a gross misunderstanding of what his ideas would do to our country, but honestly, after Wall Street, irresponsible and unsustainable lifestyles on the part of the American people, and the Economic Crisis that has hit our nation, I’m for a shaking up of our systems, no matter how painful it might be. I hate most of John McCain’s policies, he’s pro-war, he’s pro-big government (well, same goes for Obama, I suppose, and probably in a greater way, but he’s pro-big government that the rich will pay for), and honestly he ran his campaign in such a sleazy way that I no longer believe (as I did in 2000), that he is a principled man.

  But what do you do when you believe God is dealing with the nation on one issue? Well, for me and my house that was voting based on the one issue. I wanted a pro-life candidate in office, especially given the fact that they are projected to install 3 new justices on the Supreme Court (allowing it be stacked obscenely in either direction). I believed that having a pro-choice president in office would mean that those seats would be filled in the wrong direction. But there-in lies the rub.

  Daniel 2:21 (ESV):

  He changes times and seasons;
  he removes kings and sets up kings;
  he gives wisdom to the wise
  and knowledge to those who have understanding;

  Well, what the heck? I mean, if God was so dependent on who sits in the Oval Office in a little over 70 days, then what does that state about his sovereignty? I read an article this morning published by Dutch Sheets (probably the single greatest influence in my life regarding the shifting of my understanding from pure predestination to deterministic free will) in which he basically states that the reason Barack Obama is president is because the Church failed to pray enough and that this indicates that we are headed towards judgement. But, wait a second. I thought that God removes and sets up kings? Doesn’t that mean that it was God’s will that Obama be president? Doesn’t that mean that, even if this is a signal that judgement is coming, that the judgement was in God’s plan all along? But more importantly, doesn’t the idea that just because Obama is president we will have pro-choice judges in the Supreme Court which will call down unwilling judgement on our nation fly in the face of God’s sovereignty. I just can’t accept that God is ever forced, against his will, to do something he would rather not do. Yes, this flies in the face of the free will verses, especially Ezekiel 22, and at the same time, I don’t know, I just can’t believe that God could allow himself to be thwarted like that simply because we didn’t reach some sort of critical mass of prayer.

  It’s the system that seems so wonky to me. I picture God on his thrown looking at a one of those applause meters going, ‘OK, I put the bulletin out to my people that they are to pray for this issue. Oh, darn it! The prayer meters only 30% full. Come on, pray more and louder people! 50%… Almost there! Shoot, only 15 more days till times up. 75%! Come on! No!! Times up. Shoot!.’ The picture is almost pathetic. I can’t reconcile it with the verses that ascribe sovereignty to God. And I can’t reconcile the image that God does not need us at all and simply allows to play in a theatre of partnership with the verses that ascribe free will and co-ruler-ship to us.

  Anyway, I have no conclusion here, except for the fact that I still believe we should be trembling as a nation about the issue of abortion and praying that God would end it sovereignly. It’s the sovereignly that is important. Obama doesn’t pick Judges, I don’t think. God does. I guess that is actually a conclusion of sorts, just not a concluded one. I still can’t imagine how this all actually works, nor do I have any real confidence that I’ll ever get to that point.

• Poor in Spirit: David

  From February 14, 2008 @ 5:56 am

  If it had not been the LORD who was on our side— let Israel now say— if it had not been the LORD who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped! Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth. Psalm 124

  The nation of Israel was not weak. Just read a passage like Exodus 1:7-10 or 2nd Chronicles 1:9 and you’ll get the picture. They were a powerful, numerous people that more than likely could have relied on their own strength to defend their borders and conquer their enemies. This is one of the most shocking things that I’ve learned as I’ve read through the histories of the Old Testament. And yet David gives all of the glory to God over and over again throughout the Psalms, including Psalms 124.

  Like Paul, David could have trusted in himself and the power of his nation easily. I think David shows himself to be a lot like Paul in Phillipians 3:3-7; he had every reason in the flesh to boast. It actually made sense for him to boast! Not many people can say that, but he could. David was the king of one of the most powerful nations in the earth, and yet God gave him the eyes to see that apart from God, the nation would have been swallowed alive. This is not because they were weak. It is because in the end the one who decides these things is God.

  So David gives glory where glory is due. No matter how powerful a nation is, they all fall to the hand of God. Just look at the Assyrians. Their empire is ruined when God visits judgement upon them for their sins, and they had almost defeated the whole known world by that point. All man stands at one level before God, and that level is very low. So, in the end David was also a man who reveals himself to be poor in spirit.

  This is something that I so badly want for myself. I want to understand that no matter what I do in the flesh (some of it good even!), ultimately any good that comes of my life is because of God’s grace towards me. I mean that literally. I have no good apart from him! That’s what I want to believe and experience. So pray for me, because I need major help if I’m going to get there.

  Love you guys!

• Solomon’s Desire

  From February 07, 2008 @ 6:30 am

  In that night God appeared to Solomon, and said to him, “Ask what I shall give you.” And Solomon said to God, “You have shown great and steadfast love to David my father, and have made me king in his place. O LORD God, let your word to David my father be now fulfilled, for you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people, for who can govern this people of yours, which is so great?” God answered Solomon, “Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked possessions, wealth, honor, or the life of those who hate you, and have not even asked long life, but have asked wisdom and knowledge for yourself that you may govern my people over whom I have made you king, wisdom and knowledge are granted to you. I will also give you riches, possessions, and honor, such as none of the kings had who were before you, and none after you shall have the like.” So Solomon came from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting, to Jerusalem. And he reigned over Israel. —2Chr. 1:7-9

  Because Solomon’s greatest desire was wisdom, the Lord blessed him in all things.

  I think what amazes me most about this story is that the God of Genesis 1, Revelation, and Exodus pops in to see Solomon and speaks like a Genie! This is the “Let there be light!” God; the “Where were you when –, Job?” God. And yet here he is, asking a man essentially, “What do you wish of me?”. Wow. I never thought that through, but it really is incredible.

  I think almost as amazing as the situation itself, though, is Solomon’s response. Keep in mind that there is very little coercion, if any, going on here. Solomon=Aladdin and God (at least for the moment) has made himself =Genie in the Lamp. Solomon really could ask for anything in the world. Yet he asks for wisdom.

  It’s also wonderful how he connects this with the prophetic history of his family. I get the picture of a very young Solomon in David’s house listening to his Dad pray and sing about the faithfulness of God, being there when David was writing some of the Psalms, just talking with his Dad, and marveling at what God had chosen to do with David. From that place, Solomon looks out at the huge nation that God had made him king over and says, “If I’m going to be part of that promise, I know one thing that I’m going to need a lot of…”.

  What I love about this: It shows that Solomon knew that he was unwise.

  Solomon got it. We’ve been going through the Beatitudes at Church recently and of course the very first one is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I’ve been reading some lately and Robb has said a bit about what it means to be poor in spirit. It’s such a tricky little phrase it seems. Could’ve said it clearer Jesus? :) I’ve come to the conclusion, for now, that to be poor in spirit is to realize and possess the knowledge and attitude that in and of yourself, you are completely and utterly incapable of any good.

  I think that is what Solomon did here, and I believe that is why God rewarded him so extravagantly. He saw a man that truly was poor in spirit, who looked at the task God had so clearly given him, and felt dwarfed and subdued in the face of it. His one request, when he had every option open, showed where his heart truly was.

  Any thoughts about Solomon or being poor in spirit? Leave them in the comments

• I Am a Tax Collector

  From September 19, 2007 @ 10:11 pm

  OK, we’re going to be doing an experiment tonight called brevity. We’ll see how I do.

  God has been highlighting an extremely simple thing to me lately.

  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

  I’ve been gripped with an understanding that I am a sinner, and that I always will be. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather be a tax collector beating on my chest saying, “God, HAVE MERCY ON ME!” than to have all the pomp and glitter and self-assuredness that comes along with being one who is righteous. I don’t ever want to look at another human being like there anything less than I am. This shouldn’t be hard, because as far as I’m concerned, I am the worst of all sinners.

  God is relentlessly kind to me. Unceasingly kind! He will not stop giving me grace. And every time I tell him that I’m not worth the price he paid for me and that I’ll forget him in the next five minutes, he sits with me as I weep and puts his arm around me. And then I go and forget him. And I don’t publish his glory to my friends and I don’t tell of his mercy and forgiveness to everyone I see. The fact is, I am the worst of sinners because despite God’s relentless kindness towards me, I still find it in me to snub him at every turn.

  Part of my journey right now is allowing that to have it’s perfect effect in me. If I realize this, that God himself will never stop loving me, despite my failures and my out and out spitting and vomiting all over him in my sin and destitution, then it drives me to say, I don’t have to be ashamed. I’m not disqualified by my sin today. I’m not disqualified because I have a terrible capacity for lust or because I loose my temper with my wife or because I become prideful around other Christians or because, secretly, I really think there will come a time when I don’t need God anymore to be worthy. God remembers that we’re dust! Our sin is always before him. We don’t shock him, we shock ourselves! This allows me to run to God when I snubbed him a moment ago. And I don’t need to understand why he let’s me do this! I don’t have to chide him and tell him he’s giving me better than I deserve and that really, if he would take another look at me, he’d send me to hell like I deserve and remove his grace from my head and allow my sin to be revealed to the world where I would be mocked and ridiculed and crucified like I should be. I can’t just rest, easy in the fact that he’s chosen to love me, and I can’t do a thing about it.

  I love him. I’m weak, and I’ll forget him in 5 minutes and trade his glory for the works of my hands or some even more worthless thing. But right now, I love him. With everything that I am.

• On the Existence of God

  From June 07, 2007 @ 12:37 am

  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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