Opus 2026-274: Born Again…and Again

My younger brother died just a little over a year ago.  He left an awesome legacy in his children, all serious believers, and his grandchildren.  The funeral was inspirational and the time with family was refreshing.  This past weekend we had my sister-in-law down and continued the healing.

One of the topics that came up was the nature of eternal life and that opened the door to a lot of glorious attempts to understand the impossibilities.  In the conversation she shared a thought that had never occurred to me.  She equated the baby emerging from the womb with the resurrection.  You can carry any analogy too far, and I am sure we did, but the parallels were inspiring.

Picture a baby in the womb.  There is no light.  The concept of light is incomprehensible.  When the infant emerges his eyes are assaulted by a brightness and a variety that he has no way of understanding.  Slowly, over time, things begin to make sense and a whole new dimension is embraced.  I look forward to the visuals of heaven.

The newborn must deal with a greater clarity of sounds.  I remember talking to our children before they were born.  I know they could hear or sense the vibration of my voice.  They may not know the words but the timber was familiar.  Now they had to begin to figure out the words, melodies and sound effects.  I expect there to be music in heaven that would put me in a trance if I heard it today, or it might burn out my ears.

There will be freedom of movement.  In the womb the baby and kick, punch and squirm.  He has no comprehension of crawling and the idea of walking would really be strange.  What will our incorruptible bodies be able to do?

We can readily see parallels with what the resurrection will bring.

In between there is another required rite of passage.  In John it is called being born again.  Paul talks about three levels of spiritual condition at the end of I Corinthians 2 and into chapter 3: Natural, carnal and spiritual.  The natural man has no comprehension of spiritual things and the carnal Christian is limited to the milk of the word.  Only the spiritual man can begin to comprehend the great truths of God.  That is why the Bible continues to speak to us all our lives. 

We have come through a lot.  What is to come will dwarf the past.  Keep on the path for the final resurrection.  The third time is the charm.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-036: Thanks Thoughts: I Am Puzzled

I am thankful this morning for things that I don’t understand.  You could apply that many different ways but what’s on my mind at the moment is the mystery of the Trinity.  How can one God be three persons?  That’s the reason we called it a mystery.  I’m sure that we have similar issues in philosophy, physics, biology, and any other area of intellectual pursuit and thinking.  The difference between theological mysteries and other intellectual mysteries is that many of ours are indeed impossible to understand.  They go beyond our frame of reference as physical human beings in such a way that our minds cannot wrap around it.

At the same time, what is also interesting to me is that while I can’t understand it, and recognize I can’t understand it, I can grasp the concept and the reality.  Again going back to the Trinity, I can emotionally except the idea that one God can exist in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  In the same way, I can grasp that an entire computer functions on ones and zeros.  But again, whereas I might eventually understand that if I wanted to wrap my head around computer programming, I know I will never understand the Trinity.

I’m good with that.  It points out to me that God is too sophisticated for me to understand and yet personal enough to let me know I’m included in His creation.

It’s a weird place to be. It’s a wonderful place to be. And I am thankful.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-460: Always More Questions

My King James Only friend sent me three passages of scripture.  He has sent them to me many times before and I guess he expects me to suddenly have an epiphany and agree with his interpretations.  That would certainly make my life easier but would not make me anymore secure in my intellectual honesty, let alone my spiritual condition.

In looking at the verses he sent, having received them many times before, and knowing where he’s coming from, I focused on the word “mystery”.  That was the key to what he was talking about.  I took this as an opportunity to think and meditate on the concept of mystery in relation to God and what he has done for us and what he’s going to do for us.  It promises to be an interesting journey, even if not the one which he thought he sent me a ticket for.

And thinking about mystery and God I thought about how terms that we think we know can be described as mysteries.  For instance, in first Corinthians 15, we find Paul stating,

(1Co 15:51 KJV)  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

I thought I knew what the resurrection meant.  Paul is saying there’s a mystery involved.  He may have partially explained it there, but it set my mind to thinking about eternity and about being in the presence of God and how many things there will be to investigate and think about and meditate on.  That of course turned me to thinking about God.  Can we ever reach the edge of who God is, what He’s thinking, what He’s doing?

Since I believe that God is not a static substance, but is the living God, I think of our understanding of living is being something that is growing and changing and interacting with its environment.  Those are ideas that don’t go along with our traditional ideas of God and who He is.  We think of Him being immutable and unchanging, and yet if that’s the case, how can He have conversations with us in real time if we are free beings?  You see my problem?

My mind just blows out thinking about infinity and how infinity times infinity equals infinity.  It doesn’t make sense in our finite minds.  Is there an edge to infinity?  Is it continuing on or has it already reached an end?  These are concepts that are impossible for us as human beings to even begin to grasp.  I question whether we will even be able to deal with them in our glorified bodies, with our glorified minds, with eternity to contemplate on and God to answer our questions.  We are simply limited to our vocabulary words and an eternity we will have the words of all vocabulary plus the language of angels.  I’m wondering, if even then we will be able to explain who God is.

That is why terms like “glory” and “majesty” which are used in the Bible are indications, not descriptions.  They are declarations of our limitations, not descriptions of His reality.  I am good with that because it gives me an indication of how awesome, in the real sense of awesome, eternity is going to be.

Hope to see you there.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-183: Up or Down

It started with questions about Samuel being raised up on his sleep by the witch of Endor.  

(1Sa 28:13 KJV)  And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.

Samuel came up out of the earth, or so it says.  Does that mean that Samuel was in hell?  Does it mean that heaven is under our feet?  All kinds of questions came up and eventually we came to the Old Testament saints who seemed to have gone to be with God.  

We must admit that there are at least four individuals that we know were with God before Jesus went to the cross.  Start with Enoch.  Then you have Elijah who also was taken by God.  Then you have the story Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man in which Abraham appears.  Finally you have the Mount of Transfiguration where we see Elijah again and Moses.  Whatever else you want to say about salvation and eternal life we have these four.

We also have very clear statements that the only way to the Father is through Jesus, that He was the Perfect Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, that without the shed blood of Jesus there would be no forgiveness of sins.  Do you sense any problems yet?

Somehow in your theology, and your understanding of the teaching from the Bible, you must make a way for both of these to be true.  How did Moses end up on the mount of transfiguration, talking to Jesus before Jesus went to the cross?  How did Abraham end up talking to the rich man from Paradise before the shedding of the blood of Jesus?  

These are questions which you must deal with.  You can’t throw out or ignore much of the Bible just fit into a bit of theological tradition that you have been taught.  If necessary, lean on mystery. Mystery is a part of scripture.  A well know example is found in the clear teaching in the Bible that God is one.  We also have clear teaching that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.  They talk to each other and about each other, yet there is one God.  Mystery.  We call it the Trinity.  The Bible would call it a mystery.  Mysteries by their very nature are hard for us to understand or totally beyond our comprehension.

So if you can’t figure it out, call it a mystery.  Whatever you do, don’t deny the truth.  There are answers.  There are explanations.  Sometimes we understand them.  Sometimes we don’t.  But they are still true.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-164: Signs the Brain Is Still Alive

I am constantly startled when I come across things in the Bible that I should’ve seen but I don’t remember ever being aware of.  Sometimes it’s not earthshaking, just surprising.  One of those happened at Wednesday night Bible study.  We were reading about the crucifixion of Jesus in Matthew, and we came to these verses,

Matthew 27:52-53 (KJV) 52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, 53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

I was aware of this passage, and of the “saints” rising from the dead and walking around.  If nothing else, the current infatuation with zombies would bring that to mind.  What I had not seen before was that this took place after the resurrection of Jesus.  In other words, this is a passage that is written later, and then inserted as something that was going to happen, tying it to the resurrection.

Interesting.

It doesn’t change my world or bring out any new theological perspectives.  It did make me start wandering in my mind and associating details that have nothing to do with each other.  One thing that came to mind was the Shroud of Turin.  I had just watched part of a video of a priest who is in charge of research on the shroud.  It was very interesting and of course one of the discussions was “Is this really the shroud of Jesus”, which is one point.  Another is, if it’s not the shroud of Jesus is it from the time when Jesus was crucified.  The priest, of course, said he would love it to be proven to be the shroud of Jesus, but even if it wasn’t he’s considered it’s still a wonderful investigation because there’s so many mysteries involved in it.

I got to thinking. If this were not the burial shroud of Jesus, but was from that time with all of the mysteries involved in how it was produced, could it have been the shroud of one of those saints that were resurrected?  Letting my mind wander further, was it the divine force that caused Jesus to be resurrected that somehow bled over into the other graves nearby, and did the same mysterious force project through other shrouds?  I guess it’s just nonsense speculation, but that’s how my mind works.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-131: Mystery

I have a friend who likes to emphasize Paul talking about mysteries.  When he talks about Paul and the mysteries, he is talking about a specific doctrinal position focusing on the revelation that Paul received from Jesus.  He is talking about Paul revealing something totally new.  And he has his reasons for proposing that.  Most of those reasons have to do with fitting into his system of theology.  That, of course, is my opinion offered without charge.

I would suggest that when the word mystery is used in the Bible, it does not refer to some secret knowledge.  I would suggest that mystery in the Bible refers to things that we can proclaim and share, but not to even begin to totally understand.  Paul uses the term in regard to the resurrection.  I need to look at some of the other uses of the word mystery, but it does not mean secret knowledge.  In modern terms I would think of the trinity and incarnation.

When my friend quotes what the secret knowledge means, everything he comes up with I can find reference to in the Old Testament except for a clear statement that the cross finished something.  When Paul says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, I can find reference to that multiple times in the Old Testament as God declares that He is the God of all people and that all nations will come to him.  When it comes to grace and faith, I can find lots of references in the Old Testament about how we are saved by God‘s power and by our belief in him.  And so forth.

So I submit that mystery is not some secret that God was hiding from us, but a glory that we will spend eternity delving into.  I don’t know if it applies or if it’s just spiritualizing, but take how God refused to show his face to Moses, because Moses could not handle seeing God’s face.  That will not be true in eternity. And the same thing may apply about many of the realities that God has hinted that and has laid the foundation for.

Eternity is going to be ________________ (fill in unknown English word that is a million times more awesome than awesome).

homo unius libri

Opus 2016-235: The Unexplainable

William Lane Craig was talking about physics on one of his podcasts and trying to explain some complex detail of science.  At one point I expected him to say “It is too complicated to explain.”  He didn’t.  He went and attempted to make it clear.  I don’t remember the point buy I do remember wondering, “Is it possible that something is not too complicated to understand but too complicated to explain?”  I am more at home with theology than physics or philosophy so I apply it to concepts I deal with every day.

Have you ever tried to explain the trinity?  I have.  I have a deep satisfaction with understanding it even though I am continually getting new insights.  The problem is explaining it.  I constantly have a comment of one of my professors run through my mind, “Gentlemen, if you ever think you understand the trinity you have probably drifted into heresy.” 

Think about the things that are so hard to explain.  At school I tell my eighth graders that I had a lot of fun changing diapers.  I tell them that it is different when the child is yours.  They don’t believe me.  They don’t understand.  I have had fathers who understand but noone without the experience even has a clue. 

This does not mean we turn off our brains.  It does not mean we abandon thinking or reason.  It does not mean we stop changing diapers.  It means that we have been out and experienced enough to lose the arrogance of thinking our understanding is the measure of truth.

Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-237, Spiritual Gifts: Mercy

(Romans 12:8 KJV)  Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

Mercy.  I understand the concept.  I am willing to extend it at times.  I have let spiders live, as long as I am outside on their turf.  I don’t kick dogs.  But I must confess I do not understand people with the gift of mercy.  They confuse me.  That may be their purpose.

I can them mercy people.  They always see the good side of people and things.  If someone cuts them off on the freeway, they assume they are rushing to the hospital with their pregnant wife in the back seat, the baby half way out.  If they get short changed, they assume the person just made a mistake.  You know the kind of person I speak of.  They voted for hope and change.  I once was talking to a teacher about the moral problems of Bill Clinton.  She admitted that she know about that.  Yet she voted for him twice.  When I showed my confusion she said, “I thought he would change.”  That is the gift of mercy.  Perhaps you are one of them.  If you are, I do not understand you.

People with the gift of mercy have one important role in life.  They need to balance out those of us who think that discernment demands we punish evil.  All the time.  Every person.  We have a tendency to get carried away.  Mercy people are what keep the church from becoming what all the pagans claim we are.  It is a part of the balancing act God gave us called the body of Christ.

So I don’t understand.  Fine, but I accept.  Someday the mystery will be clear to me, but don’t count on it happening in this life.

homo unius libri