When I look back over the last decade-and-a-half of my still short life I am often amazed by all that has taken place. God’s grace is best understood against the backdrop of life and certainly my life is overflowing with evidence of his grace.

I spent some time last night watching a video of three emergents babble on about emerging spirituality in American culture. The emerging church is a movement that started as an way to merge Christianity with postmodern ideas, an attempt to update Christianity, demonstrated by Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian or Doug Pagitt’s book, A New Kind of Christianity.

In the video, the discussion revealed a combination of old school liberalism and new age, relativistic spiritualism, a convergence of ideas that defines the religious belief of many young people today where truth has little value and what matters is what you feel, what you experience, what belief fits your self-perception. I was particularly impressed that Tony Jones came out and admitted that this new notion of spirituality is little better than invent your own religion – take this element you like from this group, that element from that religion, mix it all together, and call it your own.

This is the same error committed by ancient Israel when the people of God, chosen by God to be a light to the nations, instead hid their light and adopted the religious beliefs and practices of their neighbors. God was not pleased with their open-mindedness and progressive ideals.

What the video demonstrated was the pridefulness of man, the enormous hubris we display when we declare that God is pleased whenever we disregard his revelation, the Bible, and invent for ourselves what we think makes for a good religion. Proponents of the emerging church do not believe they are acting in rebellion against God. They believe God wants them to conform Christianity to a modern age, changing beliefs and teachings to fit what the world finds acceptable, to bring in to Christianity tolerance of other religious beliefs and moral practices. But continuing in such folly can only have one ending: God’s judgment.

But what really struck me as I watched the video was that their story should be my story. I am the man who has committed tremendous quantities of time walking in folly. While some of my greatest periods of rebellion centered in my early college years, my foolishness has never really abated. And yet again and again God has kept me from plunging beneath the waves. I spent years playing with drugs and alcohol – mildly, but still involved; I had periods of deeply unhealthy curiosity in the occult; I toyed with the claims of other religions; the list of my foolishness could go on and on and on and on.

Even once I had reached a period of relative stability, it was not very stable. There was a time, not so long ago, when I was inches away from universalism, heavily influenced by the writings of George MacDonald who said that everyone will go to Heaven. And yet I found universalism so incompatible with the Bible’s teachings, but its claims so compelling, that I almost went crazy with the thought that perhaps the whole God thing was a sham.

At another time, I was deeply fascinated with Eastern Orthodoxy and medieval western mysticism. (I once met Orthodox speaker and writer Frederica Mathewes-Green and from our discussion she predicted that I would be Orthodox within a year.) This was before I had heard anything about the emerging church so it has been interesting to observe that many emergents claim a deep appreciation for Orthodoxy and mystical theology. I consumed many of the mystical writings emergents now champion. What they find appealing I also found appealing – a mystical practice of spirituality that centered more attention on how my emotions and thought life could shape my religious experience than on how the dogmatic truths of religion should shape my thinking and feeling.

Mysticism tells us to base our religious knowledge on subjective feelings and experience but the God of the Bible tells us to base our knowledge on his objective Word. The Bible is the standard of truth. My feelings and opinions must be brought into conformity with the Bible.

By rights, I should be one of three things: a burned out addict on the streets; an angry atheist consumed by nihilistic depression, since with no god there could be no meaning and no hope; or a postmodern emergent with no real grasp on truth since I would hold that truth is essentially unknowable or that it changes from person to person. But while Satan’s onslaughts against me have continued unabated, what was true during those past struggles continues to be true now: God has never released his hold of me. This is absolutely due to grace.

Even if I had never read what the Bible has to say about God’s sovereignty in my salvation and in my perseverance, I would have hints of the truth of Calvinism. If my unchanged will played a roll in my destiny, I would be Hell bound. Time and again, my will, my choice, my desire was to flee into destruction. But God grabbed me and rescued me from the pit of darkness and never let me go. I have deserved none of the good that God has done to keep me on his path. During many periods of my life, I did whatever I could to flee from his grace, but God never loosened his hold. The words of the song Always Thou Lovest Me are true of my life:

I sought the Lord and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek him seeking me
It was not I that found O savior true;
No I was found of thee!

I find, I walk, I love, but O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee;
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul
Always thou lovest me!

Thou didst reach forth, thy hand and mine enfold
I walked and sank not on the storm vexed sea
Twas not so much that I on thee took hold
As thou, dear Lord, on me.

I have cast myself into many a stormy gale. I made Satan’s work easy – I sought the struggle. Time and again, the ship of my soul was dreadfully tossed about. But by God’s grace, the anchor lines ran deep and strong and the storms were weathered.

Those anchor lines ran to the bedrock laid down from childhood onward. I am so very, very grateful to have been raised in a church that taught the Bible in its fulness, in its depth, in its breadth. I am grateful that biblical truth was never dumbed down, that we were not fed a superficial spirituality which left the door open for postmodern platitudes or the squishiness of America’s #1 Christianish religion, moralistic therapeutic deism. Moralistic therapeutic deism is held by many who call themselves Christian and proclaimed by many who call themselves pastors. It is the belief that if we live a basically good life, stay out of trouble, go to church from time to time, then we will be okay when we die. I am grateful for parents who often seemed overbearing and unreasonable and yet laid a foundation with which God would hold me fast. A foundation built on God’s Word and deep, rich, theological teachings about what his Word says. I am grateful that my mom sat me down time and again and drilled into me the catechism so that I would never forget rich truths of the Christian faith. And I am grateful that God orchestrated it all, for without his hand, his plan, his guidance, his Spirit, his Word, I would be utterly, irretrievably lost.

Instead of leaving me lost, God took me and changed me and saved me and filled me with himself and has given me work to do in his kingdom. The job he has given me is to shepherd his people, to help lay the same foundation in others that has been laid in me. That foundation is his Word, his truth, his revelation to us. God gave us his Word as the anchor for our souls. If we cast aside that anchor, we will be dashed upon the rocks. This is why I find it so distressing that many Christians, many churches, many pastors, many seminaries, many publications, many lectures, many conferences, many church growth methods, many Christian leadership seminars, produce something that resembles little more than a soupy mess. We marvel that the church is in decline, that young people are jumping ship, that so many people embrace movements like the emerging church, that so many have fallen into scandal, and we wonder what to do about it, yet we seem reluctant to return to the foundation of revelation given to us which would rescue many from the darkness.

This revelation is one aspect of God’s grace. He did not have to give us the Bible. He did not have to preserve it through the centuries. He did not have to convict men with the need to know it and translate it and protect it and pass it on. And yet he has done so. We don’t need to hold panel discussions to try and decide what the future of spirituality should look like. We have God’s Word to tell us what has been, what is, and what always will be.

Because of these things, I hope and pray that mine is always a ministry of the Word. It has caused me a great deal of pain and distress to know that so many in our churches today see the pastor as the chief motivator or innovator or coordinator of the church. The pastor is seen as the charismatic leader of a great self-help, motivational speaking organization, and he goes to the people to make them happy and he holds the events that make them feel good and if he would only not meddle too much, he will do okay. But such is not my ministry, nor is it the ministry of any who have been called to shepherd the people of God. The winds are blowing against the sails, the waves are beating into the hull, sharks are circling in the water, and nothing but God’s Word will give us a safe, steady course. And God, by his Spirit, has given us his Word. By his Spirit he has preserved it. By his Spirit he changes our hearts to receive it. By his Spirit he gives us understanding. By his Spirit he instructs those who will instruct us with it. By his Spirit he calls certain men to use his Word to lay a bedrock foundation into the hearts and minds of countless saints so that when they face their storms, they will not sink into the darkness.

And so, may I be able to say of my ministry what Paul said of his in Acts 20:26-27: Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Paul was not concerned with whether people were made to feel comfortable with their lives. Rather, his ministry usually led to people feeling quite uncomfortable. He was not concerned with whether he won the affection of the churches or was seen as the most dynamic speaker. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 1:17 he argues that preaching is not about fancy speech: For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. His goal, his concern, his ministry objective was to deliver to the people of God the whole counsel of God. Only the whole counsel of God, found in his Word, is sufficient to save sinners and build saints.

Thanks be to God who gave me his Word throughout my life as he preserved me safe through many storms. Thanks be to God for his grace. Thanks be to God for the work of his Spirit. May God preserve his church to pursue deeper knowledge and depth of his word and to have greater faithfulness to obey what he has instructed. May we be known as a people who love the Word of God and stand on God’s unchanging truth as we live it out every day of our lives.

Picked this up from Desiring God. Decided to take the challenge. Below is an argument for God’s existence from the Miscellanies of Jonathan Edwards. Following that is my attempt to explain what Edwards means, along with an illustration of his meaning.

‘Tis certain with me that the world exists anew every moment, that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed. For instance, in the existence of bodies, for there to be resistance, or tendency to some place; ’tis not numerically the same resistance that exists the next moment, ’tis evident, because this existence may be in different places. But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; ’tis evident in all things continually. Now past existence can’t be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally. If the world this moment should be annihilated, so that nothing should really and actually exist any more; the existence of the world could not be continued so that, if another world after a time should be created, that world should exist after this or that manner from respect to the manner of the existence of this, or should be so only because this had been thus or thus. Indeed, we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen, if we had seen [him] create the world at first. Revelation 4:11, “For thy pleasure they are and were created.”

‘Tis only this way that respect can be had to existence distant as to place as well as time, but as much respect is had to distant existence in one sense, as in another.

Explanation:

Edwards believes that creation, our existence, does not have within it sustaining power. Each moment exists then ceases to exist with no inherent connection to moments before or after it. The limited existence of moments is demonstrated by the fact that things change. The world of a moment ago no longer exists. In the words of Heraclitus, you cannot step twice into the same river. New moments of time come into existence through God’s creative power, similar to God’s initial creation of the world in Genesis 1. If new moments simply popped into existence without the hand of God, they would bear no resemblance to previous moments in time. Since our moments exist in a continuous sequence, there must be a God who creates those moments and connects them to each other.

Illustration:

The world is like a movie reel. A movie is a series of pictures printed on individual frames, similar to the individual moments of our existence. The frames are created by a studio, held together on a movie reel, and displayed in a consistent sequence by a projector. If not for the work of the studio to create and the reel to hold together, the frames would all be blank or would have no relation to each other. But because there is someone who creates each frame and holds them together in a continuous sequence, we have movies. So it is with God who creates each of our moments and holds them together.

What do you think he means?

The BBC has an article about the suffering citizens went through during the struggle between the Peruvian government and the Maoist rebel group Shining Path.

The article talks about a particular valley outside of Ayacucho, Peru where bodies of civilians were dumped by soldiers who were supposed to be protecting them. Ayacucho is where I went for three weeks during the summer of 2007. While traveling around the mountains it was not uncommon to have someone point to one of the passing valleys and say, “There were bodies dumped there.” Some by the Shining Path, others by government forces.

The bloodiest periods of violence are long over now but the memory remains a deep wound for the people. All the more troubling was the rise of new Maoist groups that want to return to the ways of the Shining Path. It seems unlikely that they would ever rise to that level of power but it is not impossible.

Pray for the believers in Peru who continue to minister to those displaced by the violence. While in Ayacucho I stayed in a home on the edge of a large shanty town. The shanty area formed by people who fled to Ayacucho seeking safety in numbers. Many of them left everything while seeking safety. Pray that they and all others in Peru would hear and respond to the gospel.

Below is a video I put together after my trip. I’ve posted it before, but that post is no longer around.

According to a BBC article, a scientist working at the Vatican, Father Gabriel Funes, has said that alien life could well exist on other planets and might be free from the effects of original sin.

Christians have debated whether or not there are aliens out there. The basic argument is that since the Bible does not mention intelligent life created elsewhere, such life does not exist. Others have pointed out that since the Bible is silent on the subject, we are free to assume that aliens might be out there.

Father Funes believes there may be aliens out there, and I assume he means intelligent aliens with a cognitive ability similar to ours. Such aliens might be free from original sin.

Here is my take. I believe some form of alien life can and probably does exist in the universe. We could go to other planets and we would find plants and animals. But I do not believe we will ever find intelligent alien life. Romans 8 explains why.

Romans 8:19-23 says:

This passage includes everything in creation. It says that all of creation has been “subjected to futility” because of the fall of mankind into sin. We humans are profoundly affected as well.  Here is the question to ask. If there existed other moral, intelligent beings who were somehow like us, would God have subjected those beings to decay because of our sin? Everything in creation was impacted by us. I do not think God would subject other moral, intelligent creatures to the effects of our sin. It is possible, but I don’t think so. And since the Bible tells us that everything in creation has in fact been subjected to the effects of our sin, moral, intelligent alien life must not exist.

I haven’t even touched on the question of whether or not aliens would be sinless, and if they were not how salvation might work for them. But that factors into the discussion as well.