Quick Thought on Forgiveness

I just got to thinking about a question that was posed to me, which essentially boiled down to this: How will trusting in God's judgment affect how you treat people? And my response was: Well, trusting in God's judgment means nothing to my actions if I also trust in God's forgiveness of all the crap that I do to people. So where this led me was this thought:

The only way for us to be capable of showing love is for there to be no consequences for us.

If God did not erase everything we did, then all of our good actions would be tainted by the self-interest involved in avoiding judgment. Only with the full knowledge that even if I sin I am forgiven do I yield the power to return God's love and give untainted love out to those around me.

Crap happens. But why?

Anytime something like this happens, always one of the first things to cross my mind is this: there are so few really good people out there, and so many jerks and straight up otherless (see earlier post) people; so why are we robbed of the good ones?

So, why does bad crap happen to good folks, as far as God's intervention is concerned?
Either God does not intervene in this world, or he does, but chose not to in this case, or God chose it to happen.

The first option seems the easiest road, but there just seems to be so much of my life that I just must attribute to and give thanks to God. So even though my natural inclination would be to this conclusion, some part of me tells me it's not quite right. In addition, if this was true, then suddenly the world is a much scarier place. It's like walking the tightroap and all of a sudden you notice there is no safety net below you. I can't think that God would allow no room for maneuvering on his part. Why would he limit himself that way?

So if God does intervene, where the heck was he? Why act sometimes and not other times? I don't think we could ever answer that unless we actually knew what, if anything, was due to his intervention in our physical universe.

Surely God wouldn't choose this to happen. Not a good God, and the whole universe screams to me saying, our God is good.

One final thought, and thank Bella for this one. I had to put up an electric wireless fence for my idiot dog. It gives her a nasty zap when she tries to leave our backyard. She doesn't understand why she would get zapped. She's just trying to find me. But I, being more evolved, know that she'll get lost and starve to death, or she'll get hit by a car on Johnson rd. So I zap her instead of letting those things happen. Is this what is happening to the Ray's? Is God giving them a well meaning zap? It'd be nice to think so, but I still don't. It'd be nice to think this incident had a divine purpose, but I don't think God would be responsible for this.

What I do think is that while God does intervene sometimes, his intervention is the anomaly, not the norm, and most of the time crap happens. Now God and the Ray's could use this to a good end, but I don't think it was a designed plan. This makes me walk a little more timorously. And much more worried about those I love.

I suppose that we should have strong enough hope in an afterlife to feel OK with losing people, but my beliefs on that aren't nearly solid enough to make me sigh with relief.

Scott said something to the effect of when he was a kid, his church was conditioning people to be more like the pharisees and not like Christ. Another friend of mine shared that he was scared for his own salvation because he hadn't been to church in awhile. What a load of rot. Scott, here's your corroborating evidence to go along with your thoughts. At what point did we fall back into legalism? Apparently pretty early, from Paul's letter to the Galatians. That sucks. We finally got the chance to live in the great outdoors and instead we go back to our safe little cardboard boxes that we feel so comfortable in. There's so much to experience, enjoy, and yes, there is danger out there too, but if we stay in our smothering boxes, we received nothing new when we let Christ take our hand.

I think of little children in school, having to walk single file, no talking, no turning around, etc. This is what legalism is. It is controlled, it is safe, it is comfortable and predictable, but so limiting. God has given us more freedom and responsibility. We are free to roam the halls at will. On the one hand, there is less human control, and there may be some serious disruptions. But some of us will wander off to do good things. Maybe this is a bad example.

Life is unpredictable, with ups and downs. Some of us only see the ups, some only the downs, and most of us are on the roller coaster, riding the hills and valleys. Now, if we have followed all the rules, but we observe someone in need of comforting, loving, support, financial help, etc., we have no need nor are we responsible to aid this person. We've done all that is required of us. We've given our 10%. We've gone to church the right number of times. We've followed the rules. However, outside of legalism, we might not give 10% to charities, but then again we may give 20%. We may have never stepped inside a soup kitchen, or maybe we know some of the homeless by name. But we are always compelled to love. That person in need should get our help, and it doesn't matter one bit what we've already done or not done. In fact, all that we do is a reflection of the love in us from God, so the more we receive from God the more we shine.

Instead of a checklist, we have a journey to make. Instead of rules, we have a chisel. We can follow the rules or break them in the legalism method. In God's method, we are either becoming more Christlike, or going back to looking like ourselves.

"FREEEEEEEDOOMMMMMMM!!!!" says William Wallace, and so says Christ.

Otherish or Otherless

So here's a hypothesis:
Every choice we make is based on what will bring us the decision makers more joy (or less pain).

What I mean is this: Selfishness and selflessness don't revolve around yourself at all, but rather what you do for other people. People who are selfish and people who are selfless both are acting and making decisions based on what they think will bring themselves the most joy. The difference lies in whether that joy includes other people or not. Maybe we should talk about people being otherish and otherless.

Here's where all this came from.

Clearly, selfish (otherless) acts can be seen as bringing the selfish person joy, but what about unselfish acts?

First, let's look at coercion/doing good things with a crap attitude. (i.e. We do something because someone else wants us to do it.) For example, I go see a chick flick because my wife wants me to go with her. But really I decide to go because I'd rather endure the film than have an argument, or maybe because next time I get to choose. Or I tithe, but only because I'm supposed to. So I'm doing a good thing, but I chose to do it because I'd rather lose the money than lose the eternal rewards. Or I serve someone, but I do it because I'd rather have people think highly of me than have my time back.

Second, we give/serve, and we do it with a great attitude. But the real reason why we chose to do it is because we enjoy giving/serving others than keeping our money/time/sweat to ourselves.

Challenge: try to come up with a scenario in which a person can possibly make a choice that will not bring more joy/less pain to the decision maker, without disregarding the emotional effects of the choice.

Thanks

I am so grateful that God has given me more than I need. It is such a great and enjoyable thing to be able to share with others, as opposed to being God's charity.

Image of God

INTRODUCTION:
So on Sunday Scott talked about the image of God, which started the gears turning. I haven't given it a really good think before this week, but I always assumed that it referred to something completely unique to humans (namely morality). This is actually Take 2 for this blog. In the first one, I tried to state all or most plausible possibilities for what the image of God means, and eliminate all that I could. The one left standing would be the winner. This is typically a great way to go after something if the answer isn't an obvious one. Well, I was discrediting these various ideas based on the notion that we [humans] and only we [not animals] are created in God' image (i.e. my previous assumption as stated above). The problem came when I eliminated all my possibilities. Yikes. The really scary thing came when I eliminated morality (for a highly recommended reading, check out http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13860-six-uniquely-human-traits-now-found-in-animals.html?full=true and http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523515.000-virtuous-nature.html?page=1 ). This really changed my worldview quite a bit, and although I'm no closer to being a vegetarian, I do look at animals in a new light. So I was left with the problem that there is no significant inherent qualities about humans that separate us from animals- only extent to which we possess certain traits. So, despite everything I had thought and assumed before, I was forced to conclude that the answer to this riddle was not a particular trait we possessed but simply the extent we possessed it.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
Here's what I came up with after a good long think. First I want you to imagine a particular situation.
Think of a particularly noble, loving, honorable, hard working, respected man. This man becomes father to a son. At first, this baby looks very little like the man, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, etc. The boy becomes a toddler, and starts to look more like a man, but obviously far from the what he will become. He also becomes vaguely familiar with right and wrong, although it's more of a "I want to avoid punishment" than a mature understanding of morality. The boy grows into his teens and has a much better idea of morality, but still has a long way to mature. Finally the boy becomes a man himself. He has reached a Point of Accountability in his life, where he can choose for himself whether to live as his father did, or to be a man who cannot hold a job, maintains addictions, remains immature, etc. Suppose this boy/man chooses to live as his father does. He now looks like his father, acts like his father, and while he is not his father, he is very much the image of his father. If he chooses the lesser path, his behavior doesn't resemble his father's, and alcohol, drugs, self-abuse, and failure to take care of himself all contribute to make his physical appearance look less like his father. No one would come up to this person and say, "you're the spitting image of your father."

Less developed life that we came from is like the boy during his childhood. As life become more advanced (from our perspective), these traits from God becomes more and more apparent. When man finally came on the scene, we have reached that Point of Accountability. While we were all created in the image of God, each man now has the responsibility to maintain that image or choose our own lesser path. It's easy to find extreme examples to illustrate this. Look at Hitler, and you do not see the image of God like you would if you looked at Mother Teresa. Each chose to maintain the image of God or to go their own route. Looking at Christ shows us what would happen if we did nothing to taint the image of God in which we were created. Unfortunately, all of us have chosen to live differently than that which we were intended, some more than others. However, when we chose to give ourselves to and follow Christ, we ". . .are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18)." We are looking more and more like God, as Christ changes us and works on us and chisels us into what we were created to be- the image of God.

CONCLUSION:
While morality is not uniquely human, we have such an extended knowledge of morality (that has developed along with the rest of our biological functions) that we are capable, and hence held accountable, to choose to live like our God, and be "the spittin' image of" our Father, or to forsake that path and head our own way.

Medieval Thinking

Surely we in the twenty first century do not think like those in medieval time period, right? We don't set up Inquisitions, severely abuse lower classes, or wage Holy Wars. But before you get too haughty, look at the next two frameworks for thinking, based on medieval cosmology, and see if you actually are more like those folks from way back when than you might have guessed. First, look at what this cosmology was. The prevailing (and ruling) thoughts was the egocentric notion that the earth was the center of everything, and the universe truly does revolve around us (reminds us of our teenage years).
"The waters lie above it, the air above that, and fire soars upward to the heavens. . . " beyond the moon lies the fixed "crystal spheres [stars]" and beyond that is where God and the angels reside (Primack and Abrams in The View from the Center of the Universe).

Note that the physical location of everything is very ordered. This helped shape the strongest framework of thought of the day, which is to say that everything was put into its place by God. Kings were made kings by God, peons were made peons by God, and one simply lived out the role God placed them in. To deny the divine right of the king was the same as completely tearing down their universe as they saw it. Now for us, especially in America with the American dream, we no longer think of things quite like this, and certainly not for politics or occupation, but I think that we still see this paradigm exhibited to some extent. Questions such as "What is our 'calling'?" or " What did God intend for us to do with our life?" or any sort of questions of destiny or fate all demonstrate this same idea that the positions and places we fill or will fill is all orderly and preordained by God.

The second framework for thinking comes from when the medieval cosmology came crashing down due to the work of Galileo and his contemporaries. What happened was what is considered the Cartesian Bargain. This was applicable to the culture and political structure of the time, but it continues to permeate many folks' thoughts today. What this agreement boils down to is a divorce between the spiritual and the physical. At the time, this meant that scientists would be allowed to work on explaining the physical, but leave any spiritual implications out of it. Similarly, religion would not attempt to overstep its bounds and use their religious views to explain physical phenomena. I see this divorce everywhere today, and certainly has had chain reactions within the past two hundred years that affect us today. For instance, take the common reaction of the church to the Big Bang cosmology. Here, instead of seeing this as evidence for a creation event, secular scientists make no effort to interpret the powerful meaning of their discovery, and Christians simultaneously condemn the scientific data, facts, and theories because it doesn't fit with one particular prominent religious view. Today, much work is being done to see how chemical changes within the brain affect spiritual experience. I will make two predictions: First, scientists will use this to explain away the validity of spiritual encounters, and second, Christians will condemn the science, come up with poor excuses for found data, and not even consider the possibility that perhaps God reaches us through physical means and not by magic. As a final example, go to any church, talk loudly about evolution, note the angry or offended expressions, and then see how many of those folks have read anything about the theory (this does not include reading a dismantling of the theory without reading an unbiased explanation or defense). This is the divorce between science and religion that occured in the 1600's still seen today.

Are we more civilized and sophisticated then the people who lived through and shaped medieval times? Certainly. But I think it important to recognize how these people still shape many contemporary thoughts.

Fire Fall Down By Hillsong United

Some of the lyrics to a song we sang this morning were "Your fire fall down fall down on us as we pray as we seek." It begs the question, what is meant by fire? When we sing this, what are we intending? I reckon many would say it refers to the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, the H.S. apparently comes down on the disciples in the form of flames. Personally, I have never experienced nor heard testimony to anything like that happening, so to me I cannot consider that to mean the Holy Spirit. Indeed, I imagine if I were to really penetrate the thoughts of those who answered Holy Spirit, I would not find that they believe and expect the Holy Spirit to come down on them manifested as fire, as they would claim to believe happened to the disciples so many centuries ago. For me, when I sang it (in my head- I can't play bass as well as I would like and still sing at the same time!) I fully intended it to be understanding. So much of God is unknown and convoluted by men and their belief systems, I would love nothing more than to catch a glimmer of truth about our deity. I'd be curious to know what each person's "fire" is that they want from God, that thing that they truly seek.

Intersection of Justice and Forgiveness

What a difficult question. My answer is this: Do what is beneficial. If someone needs punishment to learn a lesson, give them punishment. If the person is truly repentant, offer forgiveness to teach them grace. If others need to know that punishment will follow particular actions, proffer punishment. In each scenario, try to find what will do the most good. In a sense, we leave feelings out of it and try to look objectively at the situation and make a good decision. Of course, this is extremely easy to implement, assuming your God.

Talent vs. Character

Alright, so my fellow graduate students have prompted this thought with the following quote (which is not quite a real quote, but gets the general idea across): "I'm not dropping the class because I'm stupid but because I don't want to do the work." This represents an attitude which I have seen in other students as well.

The general idea is that a person would rather be thought to have high traits that one cannot have any control over rather than thought to have high traits in areas where we can control. I can see the logic in it as well. If you think yourself smart, you think that you can overcome anything that you need to overcome, whereas if you are just a hard worker, you may or may not be able to overcome a particular obstacle.

However, I've never seen an inspirational film on a very talented person who decided to go the easy route in life. I have seen a film about a person who was born with no arms or legs and yet is able to function autonomously. Which commands the greater respect, the above mentioned man or a Stephen Hawking flipping burgers? Of course the bright and talented man could overcome more obstacles than the dull-witted or clumsy man, so perhaps in this line of thought the talented might have a good self-esteem.

In the end however, I believe that self-esteem, self-worth, and the amount of us respect one commands is achieved from what has accomplished, what actions one has taken, what obstacles have been overcome, as opposed to gifts one was born with that were not earned or worked for.

Yet at the same time, I believe most of us would rather to be thought of as smart or naturally athletic than a hard worker. This is the paradox upon which our self-esteem rests.