Opus 2025-571: Advent Calendar: Day 12, Time to Move?

Let me spiritualize the experience of the shepherds. Spiritualizing is where you take passage of scripture and look for things which are probably not really intended, but provide some insights into life. Consider,

Luke 2:8 (KJV) And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

I want to focus on the word “abiding that is used in the KJV. When I read this, or at least stop to think about it, my mind went to the statements of Jesus about abiding in him and the promise that he would abide with us if we did. The word and it’s essence simply means to live inside or to locate at a place. It has the connotation of focusing on that place and making that place central to who you are.

The shepherds or where they were supposed to be, watching the sheep. You can only do that out in the fields. I guess in modern times you might set up some cameras and watch it on a monitor, but the idea is you need to be there to help them when they run into problems. You need to guard them. That requires abiding in the fields. That is well and good.

But what happens when the symbolic angels appear and tell you it’s time to move on, at least temporarily. What happens when God speaks to us in the spot where we are serving or comfortable and says, it’s time to get out of your comfort zone? The shepherds could’ve stayed where they were in discussed the awesome display that God had given them. They could’ve just ignored it I guess. In order to make that impossible God sent a whole host of Angels. God made all of them, see it. God made it almost impossible to ignore.

So they went.

be alert to see if God is calling you to get up and move. As I said before that could be a permanent change or just a temporary move. It could be just an adjustment. The thing is, we are to be obedient to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Merry Christmas and joyful obedience.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-570: No Know

Much of my thinking deals with the sifting of what I know and what I just think I know.  In listening to recent presentations at church I was impressed with the assurance that the speaker had that he spoke truth.  Verses were quoted, authorities recited, strong announcements made.  My problem is that I have read enough in my Bible to know if there were significant scriptures being left out, other interpretations that were not only possible, but were more likely, in conflict with his conclusions.

Most of us at sometime in our life want to know if something is true or not.  I will accept the fact that often when we just drift along in the comfort zone and as long as we are feeling no pain, then life is good.  There are other times when is really important to know the truth.  When it comes to what the Bible teaches, I think it’s important to know the truth rather than just live in tradition and habit.  It is very hard to separate Biblical truth from theological traditions.  I considered it a constant challenge in my life.

Knowledge comes in different categories.  I don’t think we stopped to think about it but we should.

One category of knowledge is that which we will never be able to understand or never know, at least not in this life.  When you run into someone who thinks they can tell you what it means, you need to be careful.  Some of that knowledge is of an infinite nature and and finite minds cannot grasp it.  I think of the nature of the Trinity here.  It exists.  We see all the scriptures that make it a logical conclusion.  Understanding it is another matter.  Another area would be something like the book of Revelation with all of it’s figurative language.  Everybody has a theory.  Everyone has a system.  They’re all quite elaborate and often times very entertaining.  But the truth is the person giving you their system doesn’t know any more than you do, in reality they just won’t admit it.  So we have some knowledge that it’s just beyond us.

Then we have knowledge that just isn’t so.  I would put the theological conclusions of people I disagree within this category.  When I meet with a friend and he tells me that Jesus only came to minister to the Jews, I’m afraid I put on my skeptic hat.  When I listen in church and your conclusions about Abraham totally overlook clear statements in other books, I find myself realizing that these people know what isn’t so.  When people use the phrase “faith alone” and the only place you’ll find the phrase “faith alone” is in James where it says that we’re not saved by faith alone.

This is the area that is the most difficult to live with.  People around us are convinced they know the truth.  Since they know the truth, they don’t need to think anymore.  They don’t need to be aware of their own inconsistencies because it fits well together in their plan.  When you read another passage, it makes their conclusions impossible, they don’t want to hear about it.  They tend to get very hostile and hot.  It may be necessary often just to keep what you see clearly to yourself because they’re not going to listen anyway.  In this category, I would think of people who claim that we cannot be righteous because of Romans 3:10.  The big problem with that is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of references in the Bible to people living righteous lives, being upright, even being perfect.

My goal is to go with the third type of knowledge.  I seriously believe that if we read carefully and think things through on our own, we can come to truth.  This does not mean we don’t discuss it with others.  It doesn’t mean we don’t listen to others.  Others might have insight that we haven’t thought about.  The thing is we can recognize truth when we see it because it is consistent with what we’ve been reading.  When we come across things that seem to conflict, I think it’s possible that we will be able to work out the conflicting aspects by digging a little bit deeper and asking ourselves what it really means.  For instance, one of the things I come across all the time are statements that talk about forever and ever.  Most people assume, logically, that this literally means forever.  The problem with that is that often you will find it used in a place where you know it can’t mean forever.  It becomes clear that the phrase is used figuratively rather than literally. J ust knowing that, recognizing it, admitting it, can take away a lot of conflicts.

So seek truth.  Sift.  Compare.  Meditate.  Listen.  And as the old Bible verse says, “Seek, and you shall find.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-669: To be, or not…

I have heard God described as the great I Am.  This, of course, goes back originally to the conversation that God had with Moses,

(Exo 3:14 KJV)  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

This was a great declaration by God differentiating Him from all the other gods. It was Him stating that He existed.

Then we have the I Am statements of Jesus.  These occur in the gospels where He is asked a question and in the translations that we see it usually comes across as, “I am he”.  The first of these in John is,

(Joh 8:24 KJV)  I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

If you have the right translation, you’ll notice that the “he” is not in the Greek text.  He simply repeating the statement from Exodus, “I am”.

So one of the great truths that I have embraced and I hope you have too is that God exists and that He is alive.  The question comes what does it mean to be alive?

That gets me looking around my yard and trying to come up with a definition.  The sidewalk is not alive.  The oak tree is.  What are some differences?  One can grow, one can’t.  One can die, one can’t.  One can change on its own, the other can only change from outside influence.  I originally started looking at this comparing, say, your dog with a rock.  One of the differences I came up with is the dog can move, and the rock can’t, but neither can the oak tree and it’s alive.  I thought of the fact that living things could reproduce and rocks can’t, but our definition of God would say that He does not reproduce.

It gets complicated.  It gets extra complicated as science advances and we come across things like the virus, and I think there are other forms of things in existence, which don’t fit the characteristics of life as we know it.

So when we say that God is alive, it’s hard to define.  I think one of the things that that means is that God is self-aware.  There’s also a term in theology, which I can never remember, which means that His existence is not dependent on anything outside of Himself.  I looked it up, aseity.  In other words He’s not created or supported by other forces.  I also think that it means that, although He does not change in character or basic essence, He is capable of the changes that involve thought and interaction with other lifeforms.  Thus we have God changing His mind based on what people do, but that does not change who He is or what His truth is.

This is an open ended thought process.  I expect to continue questioning myself on this for quite a while.  I expect God to reveal new thoughts to me and take me down rabbit trails that I didn’t know existed.  I’m looking forward to the journey.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-668: Advent Calendar: Day11, Walk It Off

One of the recurring pictures that appears at Christmas is Joseph leading a donkey with Mary riding on it.  That is one of the traditions of Christmas that has no foundation in scripture.  It it possible?  Yes.  Is it certain?  No.  The odds are that Mary had to walk to Bethlehem.  If she started from Nazarath that was about a 75 mile walk.  That would be a major hike for most of us today.  Back then, not so much.  People were used to walking everywhere but keep in mind that “everywhere” for most people was within a few miles of home.

We have a lot of traditions at Christmas.  For the most part they are harmless diversions as long as we don’t get consumed with them.  A donkey for Mary doesn’t have any theological significance.  Many of our traditions are supplements that make the celebration part of the holiday more special.  

Make sure that you take the time to concentrate on the miracle of the incarnation.  That is an essential.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-667: Roadkill Is Up

I noticed this morning that in the middle of town on a four lane divided roadway there was a dead deer laying on the center divider.  It seems like there’s been a lot of roadkill lately.  I’m not sure why it would seem that way at this point.  Maybe the cold weather dulls their senses.  It could be rutting season.  It could be they heard they are giving out free donuts somewhere.  I don’t know.  All I know is I’m seeing more of these animals that didn’t make it across the road.

What’s really interesting to those of us who are in Texas, and I would imagine it’s that way and other parts of the world, is that many times the roadkill is right in the middle of town.  If you live in a metropolitan area in Southern California or in downtown New York or something like that, you probably would have no idea what I’m talking about, but in our town there are places where you can drive through and you have to constantly be on the lookout because these deer are just wandering around.  They know they can’t be hunted.  They know their lives are sacred.  And so they’re very bold.  What they don’t understand is that the car could kill them too.

So why so much roadkill?  It is one of those great unanswered questions of life.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-666: A Winter Question

Why did God make snow white?

No, I don’t mean the fairytale princess or the caricature created by Disney.  My question has to do with the color of snow.

Was God making a racist statement?

In case you’re new to people who write with an IQ of higher than 40 that was a rhetorical question.  Since God created all races, it’s kind of hard to believe that He would be racist.  Since Jesus most likely was Semitic and had a certain look about him, it’s doubtful that Norwegians are any higher on the racial hierarchy than people of the Middle East.  While it’s true that we don’t know for sure what the coloring was of people in those days we can look at modern distribution of population and be pretty sure that Jesus did not have blonde hair and blue eyes.

But back to our question…  Why is snow white?

Well, let’s look at the physics of the matter.  White is a reflection of all the colors of the spectrum.  Black is an absorption of all the colors of the spectrum.  So when you look at the color white, you are actually looking at all races mixed together.  Or you could say all race is rejected depending on how you want to look at it.

Why did God design the universe so snow needed to be reflective?  I’m guessing it has to do with the absorption of energy and the generation of heat.  Winter is a time of cooling.  It’s a time of the Earth renewing itself.  In order to do that there are certain temperatures that seem to be better.  If snow were black, it would absorb all the heat of the sun and melt very quickly.  Black cars are hotter in the summer than white cars.  I don’t know what that would do to runoff or to the temperature of the Earth around us.  Instead of being reflected in light, the sun‘s energy would be absorbed and warm the Earth.  Talk about climate change!

I don’t know if there are emotional contents to the color of snow.  Do all people tend to be more optimistic and up in a light atmosphere?  I believe I’ve heard that some cultures wear white to funerals as an expression of morning.  It’s possible that different colors affect different people or peoples in ways that others might not understand.  The fact that snow is winter and winter is depressing to many people might say to me that the reflection of white light is encouraging rather than depressing.

If that’s racist, then deal with it.  Just as snow is omnipresent once you get away from the tropics, so racism is a part of every culture if you define it correctly, or incorrectly as the case may be.

So go ahead and dream of a white Christmas.  Like all dreams it has elements of reality, but people forget what it’s really like driving through the slush, shoveling the sidewalks, coming in covered with cold, wet, white stuff, and all the other mysterious non-joys of winter time.  In case you have never lived in snow country let me advise you not to go out to pick up the newspaper in your stocking feet.

Merry Christmas.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-665: Advent Calendar: Day 10, Second Fiddle

For some reason, Mary seems to be the focus of attention when it comes to the birth of Jesus.  One of the reasons might be that she was His mother.  Another might be the miracle of the Virgin birth.  But there was someone else there, someone else involved.  That was Joseph.

It might do for most of us to identify more with Joseph than any other character involved in the Christmas story.  He has a kind of a bit part, but he is vital.  His character and his willingness to listen to God made him essential and allowing Mary to have the baby Jesus.

Matthew 1:20 (KJV) But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Of course God chose him just as He chose Mary.  I wonder if in reality He didn’t prepare him for this.  When you go through the genealogies, you find that both Joseph and Mary trace their ancestry back to David.  There had to be some preparation in order to have these two come together at the right time.  God had to be sure that both Mary and Joseph would have the right character to be faithful to their calling.

I personally think it would be more fun to be one of the angels broadcasting the news from the skies.  I might like the prestige of being one of the wise men.  I don’t think I’d want to be a shepherd.  What God needs is more Joseph’s.  He needs more of us willingto serve faithfully, to step up when needed, and rest in the shadows when someone else is the main character.

May you find your place of service this year.

Merry Christmas.

homo unius libri