Too Hot to Handle: God and the Child of Divorce

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The Distance

Do you ever feel completely inadequate to the task of being a Christian?

The space between God and man is quite a distance to bridge, isn’t it.

I’m not talking about the distance between hell and heaven, or the moral distance between, say, Hitler and Jesus Christ. That’s obvious enough to not require a labored explanation. I’m not even thinking of the need to get saved or the importance of becoming reconciled to God and escaping the judgement we are all due.

No, I’m speaking here, not as a member of a fallen race, but as one who already knows and loves God and is seeking, however incompetently, to stagger along in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The distance between — the difference between — me and him … good grief!

Is and Ought

The Bible tells it like it is, and most times it tells us what we should do about it. But not always at the same time, and not always in the same place.

Much of the Old Testament record is very dispassionate; very ‘just the facts, Jack’. Sure, from time to time an inspired author offers his editorial comment, but this is a rarity. Most of the time, we are simply getting a record of what happened. Those who need to find an application to their own lives beyond the obvious must in many instances look elsewhere in scripture to do so.

To fail to note the difference between the parts of scripture that are prescriptive and those that are merely descriptive is to invite confusion.

Recollection and Response

Old Testament writers often describe God in human terms, though we know from other statements in scripture that many of the human qualities they ascribe to God cannot possibly be true of him in precisely the same way they are true of us.

Memory is a good example, as Ashrei points out:

“To remember, so we are inclined to think, is primarily to preserve in our consciousness a fact or an experience. A ‘good memory’ is one which retains precisely and vividly that which has been seen, heard or learned. In short, we tend to regard memory as simply one comprehensive archive. Retention of the past has great significance per se. However, it hardly exhausts the full range of memory.”

When the Old Testament speaks of God “remembering”, it does not merely refer to his ability to retain information, as it might with us.

A Chaotic Mess

Yesterday I mentioned one similarity between churches in 2016 and life in Israel in the time of the judges roughly three thousand years ago.

This was an era repeatedly characterized with the statements, “There was no king in Israel” and “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”. There was, of course, God’s law, given to Moses, and the name of Jehovah, the God who had brought Israel out of Egypt into Canaan. These somewhat influenced but did not control the daily habits of Israelite worshipers. The revealed truth of God was thoroughly co-mingled with the thinking and religious influences of Israel’s pagan neighbours.

In short, Israel was a chaotic mess.

Unwanted Dedication

Staring at the train wreck that is most of Western Christendom, it’s not hard to see one or two points of comparison with Israel’s early days in the land of Canaan in the time before God gave them a king. You know, that period the writer of Judges describes regularly with the phrase, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”.

Hmm. That’s pretty much the tale today. The difference is that while Israel had no king, the Church has a living Head.

We are without Israel’s excuse.

Wedded Blitz

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Too Hot to Handle: The Greatest Threat to Faith Today

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Your Level of Understanding

It’s 50 years since the first season of the original Star Trek TV series, so I’m rewatching some of those ancient episodes when I need a break from anything that actually requires mental activity.

Part of it is curiosity. I’ve been on a “memory” kick lately, as readers of this blog will be well aware, thinking about what we retain and how and why we retain it. So I’m interested in seeing if those episodes are anything like what I remember them to be. I was eleven or so when Star Trek blew my adolescent mind.

That’s neither here nor there. But this one little bit of typical Star Trek dialogue stuck with me, from an episode written by multiple Hugo-award-winner (and legendary curmudgeon) Harlan Ellison.

Tolerance 2.0

We live in a religious climate in which atheists can be Protestant ministers. One in which the so-called Bishop of Rome insists the Koran is just as valid as the Bible and that Allah is the “same entity” as Jesus Christ. A climate in which the ordination of women is accepted, the LGBT community embraced and the performance of same-sex marriages commonplace.

Tolerance is the sine qua non of the new Christendom; its most indispensable ingredient.

Everybody Take a Deep Breath

You may be familiar with Mark Armitage, the Christian microscopy technician formerly at California State University Northridge, who (allegedly) discovered soft tissue in the horn of a fossilized triceratops just a few years ago, ended up having his employment terminated over it, and subsequently sued the university.

The presence of soft tissue might be taken to imply that at least one triceratops was around much more recently than 65.5 million years ago, the time frame currently posited for the much-debated dino extinction event, whatever that may have been.

In short, if legitimate, Armitage’s discovery would be hard to account for under the current evolutionary paradigm.

More Complicated Than It Appears

Cause and effect are not simple things.

Lots of people would really like them to be. Whether an effect is ultimately good, bad, or a little bit of both, they would like the question “Who did it?” to have a single, obvious answer.

John Calvin taught a deterministic view of the universe that remains exceedingly popular in Christian circles today — largely, I think, because of its simplicity. It reduced all causes to … God.

Not A Tame Lion

“Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

(Psalm 2:11-12)

“ ‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’ ”

— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

It’s an odd combination, isn’t it: rejoicing and trembling at the presence of the Son of God. The quote from the Psalms is directed to “kings” and “rulers of the earth” and looks forward to the millennial reign of Christ on earth.

New, Improved, Advanced … You Need One

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Too Hot to Handle: Worth Leaving Over

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Getting It Backwards

Christian response on the Internet to the ongoing refugee/immigration issue reminds me how easy it is to get things backwards.

This is not the first time it has happened, and it won’t be the last.

First, there was a barrage of pro-immigration posts at various websites that buttressed their arguments with what appeared to be supportive proof texts: we were to be “Good Samaritans”; we were to “welcome the sojourner”; we are “all one in Christ”. The writers of these pieces moved swiftly from cursory proof to immediate and morally-imperative action: “Here’s how you can help, Christians!”

And some of us did.

The Crutch

I actually don’t know anyone who calls religion a “crutch”.

That may seem surprising. A Google search produces a list of close to 200,000 references in articles, social media comments and blog posts that begin with words along the lines of “People often say Christianity is a crutch …”

So I’m sure people say it. They just don’t say it to me.

Impatient Over Their Misery

Okay, so your sin is impressive.

At least, I’m sure it seems gigantic and unforgivable to you. And since the awareness of the magnitude of sin in our lives, its toxic effects on others around us and its absolute repulsiveness to God is a necessary step in turning away from it, I wouldn’t want to downplay it for you.

Carry on. Be miserable. Have at it.

Anointing a Bramble

The worst leaders are people desperate to lead.

I think we’re all seeing that on TV right about now. The conventional wisdom is that America is reduced to scrounging for its least-worst presidential option, and the pickings are world-record slim.

This is not a new problem. In democratic countries, politicians are stereotypically less credible than used car salesmen, TV evangelists and the mainstream media.

People who want to run the show are often the worst people to actually do it.

Total Recall

My memory is getting worse. I don’t think I’m imagining it.

Then again, if I were, how would I know, really?

On one level this alarms me. Any age-related change to the function of mind or body is a reminder that “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls”. Or as a friend of mine is fond of saying, “We’re all going there”.

That’s for sure.