Opus 2026-296: Figurative Is Inclusive

I was walking down the path of foods we can, or should, eat.  

Vegetables came early.

(Gen 1:29 KJV)  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

Keep in mind that “meat” is basically food not steaks and chops.

Meat was added with Noah.  Up until this time you could be a vegetarian, but I have been down that road before.

(Gen 9:3 KJV)  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

Then the Lord’s Prayer came, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Is that literal or figurative?  Yes.  The point that hit me here is that the figurative often includes the literal, it does not eliminate it.  The same is true from the other direction.  This where I am going today.

One of the debates I am always involved in when trying to understand the Bible is whether a statement is literal or figurative.  If you want to join the argument go to a church where the pastor uses the KJV and announce that the book of Revelation is mostly figurative.  You might want to have your will drawn up before you go because you might not be coming back.

Take the statement from the Lord’s prayer.  Does it mean that we are to eat bread every day and that God is supposed to make sure that happens?  If you lived in a day and age when bread was the major food in your culture then that would be a literal request.  You would not be asking for variety but for sustenance.  Today with our abundant choices in what we eat it could be understood just as well as getting enough calories.  If you are gluten intolerant then you definitely want it to be figurative.  

Let the Holy Spirit guide you as you seek to understand truth.  There is often a basic literal quality but that is often applied in many ways to your unique situation.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-241: Facing the Inevitable

Let me give you one of the most divisive statements ever made:

Genesis 1:1 (KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The first three words begin the division. “In the beginning…”.  You would think this would be obvious but the pagan version of scientists have been denying even this bit of the obvious.  Science has been claiming there was no beginning ever since the Enlightenment became the dominant force in the West.  Their mantra has been that the universe is infinite at both ends.  In the early years when they were basing their theories on philosophy and personal necessity, that is understandable.  But we know more today and the truth is still ignored.

So Christians have always had a bone to pick with the pagans.  When you add the next word it gets even testier.  “In the beginning God…”.  Here is where punctuation might help.  As the secular scientists began to look at the evidence they themselves were collecting it became clear that the universe was not eternal.  So they would translate this, “In the beginning ?”  They didn’t know and had nothing but cool science fiction themes to work with.  Much of the science fiction writing I have read is trying to fill in the blank where the question mark goes.  Imagination is a wonderful thing to base a novel on but is not a foundation for reality and real science.

Christians of course would use different punctuation.  We would switch the question mark for an exclamation point. “In the beginning !”  This is a basic assumption that the early scientists had which allowed them to develop the scientific method and move deeper into discovering how things work from a single cell to a galaxy.  If you can’t make that assumption then you can’t depend on your answers.  Just picture how your day would go if the law of gravity decided to act on a part time basis,

Intellectuals like to cover it up but every field of study begins with assumptions that cannot be proven or are conditional.  Does 1 + 1 equal 2?  Not in computer binary language. Some things are taken on faith.  It would help if they would stop denying that basic reality.

We know where it began and who began it.  The rest we are still working on.  Enjoy the adventure.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-493: Rule Two

I recently asked someone if they knew what the first law was God laid down for human beings.  I was told that it was to have children . Oh, OK he got me on that one.  That is true.  The first thing that God laid out as a guideline for human life was to create new human life.  Later on He will give us the framework for that in marriage, but the concept of having children is very biblical.

Then you have a second law. 

Genesis 1:28 (KJV) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

It’s a combination of several things.  You’ll notice that it talks about replenishing, of having dominion, in a word we are to be stewards of the world we live in.  How is that going for you?  Do you litter?  Do you thoughtlessly waste?  Do you allow your pets or farm animals to go hungry and unwatered?  Do you mow your lawn?  You might think mowing your lawn has nothing to do with your spiritual condition but I would suggest that perhaps that’s what it means to subdue and have dominion.

But where this thought is going is really having to do with the whole concept of creation and man’s place in it.  You’ll notice that at the end of the chapter God looks back at everything He’s done and He doesn’t just say it’s good, He says it’s very good.  That’s better than good.  And one of the parts of that goodness is that we are commissioned to finish things off for Him.

Now I know it might go against the grain for you to think that God did not complete the job.  However, if you look at what He told Adam to do, it was to take the rough product and turn it into a finished planet.  That does not mean cut down all the trees and plant roses.  It means too carefully harvest the trees and make conditions ripe for the trees to reproduce themselves.  It might mean cleaning out the under brush.  Now at the very beginning there wouldn’t be much brush to clean out, after all God just got through with his work.  But it would accumulate.

So we are in the process of finishing off creation.  It will be a never-ending job at least until the new Jerusalem and the new Earth.  We will have a continual crop of new children to be disciplined and trained.  We will have weeds anxiously trying to run our lives.  We will have rivers that want to get out of their banks.  The challenges will go on.  God is giving us a commission.  We need to take this second law seriously.  The problem with the green movement is not that they are concerned about the environment, but that they consider the environment, which we are to subdue, as being superior to us.  They reject God and the order that he established.

There are some areas where it’s a good thing to be a legalist.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-283: How Inspired Is Inspired?

I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  There are a lot of questions on how to define that or apply it, but at its core, it means that the Bible we have was planned, edited, produced and overseen by God.  That is all in the past tense.  Also, in the past tense is the molding and the gathering of the books, establishment of the Cannon, and the breaking down into chapters and verses.  All of that would be more current in the matter of inspiration, but I still believe that God had a hand through the work of the Holy Spirit and molding this book.

I could go a lot of directions with this, but I thought I was having this morning started with realizing how appropriate the first verse of the Bible is.  Actually, it started with thinking about how much of the Bible is written in figurative language, with hyperbole and metaphor and such.  From there I went to Genesis 1:1.  I thought it an appropriate way to start a book that is describing to us who God is, and how we can come to live in His presence for eternity.

Genesis 1:1 (KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

At first, I told myself, this is an incredibly literal statement, but then I took another look.  It’s possible when you consider the magnitude of God and the awesomeness of creation that the phrase “heaven and earth” is meant in a figurative sense.  It is not figurative in the sense that it was some mysterious ether that He created, but the fact that there are no words in any human language that can describe the grandeur of His creation.

So yes, this verse is an awesome way to start out the salvation history that God wants to communicate to us with.

How about at the other end?

Revelation 22:21 (KJV) The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Since the focus of God’s salvation history was the incarceration, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, this is a powerful way to finish.

Could I have picked better verses out of the entire text of the Bible to start and finish with?  I doubt it.  I will just trust the God who is in charge even to the point of ordering the books that we have today.

I remember a saying that people used to crowing when they were playing cards as they laid down their winning hand, “Read them and weep”.  It’s a bit different for us as God lays down his winning hand, includes us in the pot, and moves on to return in victory.  We would say, “Read them, and rejoice.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-238: Made in the Image…

I am meditating or contemplating on the concept presented in Genesis that human beings are made in the image of God.

Genesis 1:26 (KJV) And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

As always, when I meditate, my mind goes into free-range chicken mode, which means that I find it almost impossible to follow a prearranged trail.  I think that is one of the aspects of what it means to be created in the image of God.

I just finished watching some of the Star Trek movies that were made about 10 years ago.  There were good times and bad times.  I generally enjoyed but I noticed a certain tendency among the villains.  They were certainly nasty.  They were certainly brutal.  They were incredibly powerful.  But in spite of the aura of superiority that was given to them, none of them were particularly creative or intelligent.

That made my mind segue to the concept of computer games. I’m not a big computer game person when it comes to all this advanced graphic stuff the young people seem to like.  I don’t have the physical reactions to make things happen and I don’t have a commitment to figuring out how to make things happen.  What frustrates me the most is how the computer cheats.  Computers cheat.  They are programed to do that.  The only thing the computer has going for it is that it can change the ratios.

In most of the games I play when you come up against a superior enemy they’re only superior because the computer gives them, say a three to one advantage instead of a two to one advantage.  You as a human being can work out strategies to deal with the two to one advantage, but it doesn’t work with the three to one advantage and now you have to figure out a way around that.  When you are successful in the computer changes, the ratio to four to one.

Which brings us back to the image of God.  Someone once pointed out that in the past million years robins have not developed a new way of building a nest.  In the same way so-called intelligent dolphins have not come up with any way of making life better for themselves.  In that timeframe, assuming that you go with the Earth being older than 4000 years BC, human beings have a come up with continual innovations and new ideas.

Enjoy your image.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-092: Why Evolution Does Not Bother Me

I don’t come unglued at the mention of the word “evolution.”  Things change.  Things adjust to their environment.  I have no trouble with that.  The part that sets me on a different track than the secular community is that I believe that God is in charge.

Keep in mind that the difference between Christians and non-Christians in the area of creation/evolution is not in the process which science is working to uncover but in the statement and Genesis 1:1,

Genesis 1:1 (KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And,

Genesis 1:27 (KJV) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The difference is not in the six days in between.  The difference is not between 15 billion years and 4004 years.  The difference is not in literal history or figurative legends.

The difference is and whether God is in charge or not.

I can deal with a concept of evolution because I watch God and how He works today.  Do you notice that He doesn’t deliver to us full grown children, out of college, cured of acne, on their way with successful careers.  For some people He takes years before they can even conceive a child.  It takes nine months to develop the child that is born.  When the child is born, it doesn’t even know that the object moving in front of his eyes is his hand.  He cannot control his bowels.  My son, the perfect genius that he was, could not figure how to suck.  All of that takes a long time.

If that’s how God develops us, there must be something in Him that likes the process of growth and development.  I don’t have any trouble with Him looking at the universe that way.  You say, “You mean you don’t believe in the six days of creation?”  I believe that God created the heavens in the Earth.  The question I would ask you is, “Why didn’t He do it in one day?”  Or I could ask you “Why didn’t He do it all instantaneously?”  I don’t have an answer and neither do you.

Do you believe God created the heavens and the Earth?  Then you are creationist.  If you believe it took Him 15 billion years simply because He enjoyed the process, you are still at creationist.  The key is not the process but the processor.

Learn not to freak out.  They love it when you do that.  Send them back to their video games mumbling and disoriented.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-434: Literally Figurative

I have trouble with people who insist on interpreting everything in the Bible literally.  I believe that the Bible is inspired.  That is one of those points you can’t prove.  Either you accept it or you don’t.  When we get to other words such as “inerrant” you need a bit of wiggle room to define what you mean.  There are places where you can take the Bible literally.  When it numbers the warriors in the tribe of Judah, I acceept that number.  When John 3:16 say “whoever” I think it means whoever.  On the other hand there are many places that must be looked on as figures of speech or literary devices.  I have already written about God being a chicken.  I might also point out that when Luke says that “all the world should be taxed” he was not making an application of “nothing is certain but death and taxes” he was talking about the known Roman world.

We are to take the Bible literally when the author intends it to be taken literally.  We are to assume that the Holy Spirit has as much literary skill as Shakespeare and is fully capable of using hyperbole and metaphor.

To be honest, much of my problem is that they still get figurative when necessary to “prove” their own system of belief.  I have a friend who is constantly telling me that some great truth of the Old Testament does not apply to me because it was written to the Jews.  In other words the 23rd Psalm has no application to me since I am a Gentile.  Since I love a good argument I will then tell him that the book of Romans does not apply to him since it was clearly addressed to the church in Rome.  As you may guess, he does not live in Rome.  As you may also suspect, he does not agree with me applying his own principles to understanding the Bible when it does not help his case.

What brings this up?  I was thinking about the creation account and the provision God made for food.  Note the verse,

(Gen 1:29 KJV)  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

Don’t get hung up on the KJV use of “meat”.  It just means food.  Do you notice what is lacking?  Not only is bacon not on the list but neither is your favorite steak.  It seems that we were originally crated to be vegetarians, even vegans.  Don’t get mad at me.  God is the one who declared this.  Of course if you keep reading you will notice that the lions and wolves were also to be vegetarian,

(Gen 1:30 KJV)  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

I don’t know how technical you want to get, but since we are looking at being literal, consider that it refers to “bearing seed”.  If my analysis is correct this means reproducing by spreading seeds.  This might rule out things that grow underground or spread by extending sprouts.

Why do we enjoy a good hamburger today?  Because as a good Bible scholar you have continued to read and came across this revealed to Noah after the flood,

(Gen 9:3 KJV)  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

Don’t build your theology and values on cherry picked verses understood literally.  We serve a living God who is smarter than the people who disagree with you.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-275: The Six Nano-Seconds of Creation

Why do some people think that God needed 24 hours to complete His creation work for the day.  Isn’t that limiting God a bit.  After all, it says,

(Gen 1:3 KJV)  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
(Gen 1:4 KJV)  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
(Gen 1:5 KJV)  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I don’t see any time-lapse photography here.  I see a proclamation and a fulfillment.  I suggest that Moses would have used “nano-second” if he had been familiar with the term.  Don’t be a person of weak faith.

Millions or billions of years would seem more appropriate here, not because God could not do it in an instant but because He probably enjoyed considering the goodness of what He had created.  How long can you look at a beautiful painting or a glorious sunrise?  Isn’t that part of the imagio dei?  Do cats enjoy the Mona Lisa?

Of course it is possible that, since God exists outside of time, He was able to spend what would seem to us to be billions of years enjoying the big bang and it would have appeared instantaneous.

There is so much room for imagination in pursuit of truth.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-254: Dark Thoughts: The Devil Made Me Do It

One of the questions that keeps coming to my mind is whether I, as a member of the human race, have free will.  I am asking from a theological perspective but it is also an issue in philosophy, psychology and the hard sciences.  It is one of the big questions of life.

In its quest for understanding one of the questions of philosophy has to do with the meaning of life.  In that dialogue between different scholars one of the famous quotes comes from Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am.”  This is based on a self-awareness that generates ideas that are not programed but generated by the individual.

In psychology you have the behaviorists.  The name I associate with that is B.F. Skinner.  They teach that you have no free will.  Everything is a result of heredity or environment.  In their thinking, if you had enough information and a big enough computer, every action you take could be predicted ahead of time.

In science we have the physicists delving into the inner workings of matter.  For a long time the prevailing theory was that everything could be determined by set laws.  Then came quantum mechanics.  They are discovering that evidence that everything can’t be predicted.  Even on the molecular level there is a sort of free will.

In the dark of a Texas morning I was meditating on free will and how that is effected by the Imago Dei.

(Gen 1:27 KJV)  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

God made us in His image.  What does that mean?  Since He said it about nothing else He made it must mean that man is different than any of the animals or plants.  

Free will is an attribute of God.  The more theological term is Free Agency.  It means being aware of personhood and making choices that are not the result of coercion or robotic action.  It means not being a tool of heredity and environment.

We make choices and deal with the results, good or bad.  We are really good at blaming others for our failures and problems.  It often seems to me that much of the work of psychology and sociology is identifying the forces that force us to make the wrong choices.  The current woke default of victimhood is a result of this.  The comedian Flip Wilson could have answered all of that with his line, “The devil made me do it.”  One of the reason that modern thinking rejects man as created in the image of God is that it would force them to accept they are moral creatures responsible for their actions.

It is much more fun playing the victim.

So make you choice.  God gave you a chance to do that.  At least that is my understanding.  Of course I could just be programed to say that.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-233: The Human Face of God

The Bible tells us that God created.

(Gen 1:1 KJV)  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

After that we have a brief rundown of the steps of creation.  In that checklist there is one that stands out, the creation of man.  What makes it different is that man is created in the image of God.

I come to this from musings on the nature of free will and the conflict between the idea of free will and God’s omni’s.  The paradox presents us with a mystery.  How can man have free will and be responsible for his choices while God knows and controls everything?

I think the resolution comes from this statement about the image of God.

The universe as a whole is deterministic.  The laws of physics apply and, except for the direct intervention of God, the story of creation plays itself out as programmed.  God does not break in with a “miracle” very often, but is free to do so when He deems it appropriate.

Humanity, on the other hand, is given the mystery of free will.  In physics the only thing that keeps us from being able to determine an outcome is a lack of computing power and observational skills.  God’s perception goes to the level that He can see all that but in some way that we cannot understand, He goes so deep into the matrix of existence that we cannot begin to comprehend and gives us that divine quality of making choices.  Only an all-powerful God can allow genuine free will.

All choices are not pure free will.  We always need to make allowance for heredity and environment.  We need to realize that there are other people with free will and when you have two free agents nothing is certain.  Now make that billions of free agents and your mind is well on the way to being blown.  But while free will is not without its manipulators, it still exists and negates all attempts to demand perfect projection.

At one end you have a universe that runs by rules.  At the other end you have human beings given the power of choice.  In between you have the animals and I would guess they are a combination of the two.

Human beings are made in the image of God.  We will spend an eternity delving into what that means.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-113: We Made It to the Comma

I recently had the opportunity to preach and my text was Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  One of my key points was how science has finally caught up with the Bible.  

The current theory for the beginning of, can I say it, creation, is called the Big Bang.  Without getting into the weeds, it meshes very well with Christian and Jewish belief, one that science had been fighting against for a long time, that there was a beginning.  Once you get past the first comma in Genesis 1:1 there is a divergence of 180 degrees but even making it to the comma is progress.

Believers should not get too excited about this.  It does verify what we have always believed but keep in mind that the agreement will probably be temporary.  There are two reasons for that.  The first is legitimate.  It is the nature of science.  Real science is never finished and never satisfied.  No matter where you are it keeps asking, “Why?” and “How?”  That is good.  They will keep pushing and trying to delve into the nature of creation.  I think God sits up there cheering them on and maybe even giving a little prod now and then with clues and even inspiration.

The second reason is the cause of the conflict between believers and some scientists.  It isn’t because believers reject science, but that materialistic scientists reject God.  It is like leading one of these God-haters out into the rain and telling them the rain is making them wet and they will spend all of their time coming up with theories of wetness that reject the obvious rain hitting their heads.  Instead of finding ways to make the rain productive they will deny its existence and claim the moisture on their skin comes from aliens or crystals.

It would seem that even scientists can’t always avoid the big questions such as, “Who am I?”  “Where did I come from?”  “How did life begin?”  “Where did everything come from?”  and so forth.  The questions won’t go away.  That does not mean they are open to the real answers.  For many of them, possibly most, it is more important to ignore the divine Elephant in the room than to find an obvious answer that they don’t want to hear.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-298: The Truth about Chicken Volleyballs

Back when Bill Cosby was still acceptable he had a routine in which he asked the great philosophical question, “Why is there air?”  I don’t remember the entire monologue but I remember that the answer was, “Any P.E. major can answer that.  There is air to blow up volleyballs.”  Much of philosophy and theology comes in at that level.  Did Cosby give an answer that met the test of reality?  Does air fill up volleyballs?  Of course it does but there are two issues.  First, that was not the heart of the question.  Second, it is a nonsense question of no consequence.  

There are questions that are asked that receive the same kind of answers even though they are not nonsense.  One of those questions was asked by Pilate when he was interrogating Jesus.

(Joh 18:38 KJV)  Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

This was in a grilling in which Jesus brought up the subject of truth.  It is a subject that is still being avoided today.  

The first question today would be, “Is there truth?”  Does it exist?  There are really two main answers to this for anyone not trying to avoid the question:  Yes and no.  Christians would say that because there is a God and that God has a certain character, truth is real.  It does not change.  It is objective.  When I say “Christians” I mean those who are serious about their faith and believe the Bible.  Christians who do not believe the Bible will find themselves in the pagan camp and deny that there is any real truth and if there was we could not know it.  The pagan gods are whimsical and capricious.  They like to play tricks and are not known for their maturity.  Thus you can never count on anything.  

I have come across another way of expressing this difference:  Is it true because God said it or did God say it because it is true?  This became and issue very early in creation.  

(Gen 1:4 KJV)  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Only four verses in and already we are having value judgements.  Now, did light become a good thing as some mysterious point and God noticed, or did God create a good thing and is pointing it out?

The answer to the question, “Is it true because God said it or did God say it because it is true?” is simply “Yes.” Don’t you hate it when people do that?  The answer is simple and yet it isn’t.  It is a case of both/and not either/or.  When you ask the wrong question it is impossible to get the correct answer.

Some think this is the old chicken or the egg question in a different form.  That paradox is not a paradox if you believe in truth and that there is an answer.  If you are an evolutionist it is a clever question that shows how well you listened to your new age guru.  If you are a Christian who believes in creation the answer is simple.  Two chickens came before the egg or, to be precise, a hen and a rooster.  There are a couple of reason for this.  First, if the egg came first there would be no chicken to sit on it and keep it warm until it hatched.  Somewhere in the soil of the earth would be the one fossil of the one egg that existed.  If somehow the egg was in the sun just right and managed to hatch there would be no bird of the opposite sex to insure that future eggs would be fertile.  Again you are left with one fossil somewhere in the rocks.

God is the source of truth.  God speaks ex nihilo and thus truth is what He declares.  I imagine he could have made the sky green like it was in one of the science fiction series I read but in that case we would probably still call it blue and not know the difference.  Since what He declares has nothing before it and He put the whole thing together, it is true.

Once He declares it then He repeats it because it is true.  And the glorious circle goes on.

What a glorious day for philosophy, theology and logic.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-060: God’s Pronouns

Why does the Bible emphasize the Fatherhood of God and not the Motherhood?  Although I understand there are a few places where a female pronoun is used the overwhelming mass is for a male figure.  Is this just cultural or is it an eternal truth?  I did a quick search for the words “father” and “God” and came up with 160 matches.  It seems that most of the matches had the words separated and the “father” was an earthly father.  There were a few exceptions though.  One stands out,

(Isa 9:6 KJV)  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

There are no apologies, watering down or compromise in that statement.

A second search for the exact phrase “God the Father” came up with twelve matches, all in the New Testament.  A typical one was,

(Gal 1:3 KJV)  Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ,

So the testimony of the written word is that God is a masculine not a feminine.

This seems to offend the logic of our post-modern generation of 47 genders.  Wouldn’t a trinity of Father, Mother, Son make more sense?  After all it would reflect the reality of the family.  Maybe that is why the Muslims think Mary is part of the trinity.  It seems more logical.  Ignore that they got the idea from the heretics of Egypt.  It isn’t logical to our way of thinking.  That is one of the differences between a God who made man and a god made by man.

Keep in mind that the Bible was not written to “make sense” to the average skeptic.  It was written to reflect truth.  It was written to teach truth.  It is considered “God breathed”.  That is what inspired means.  To further confuse the issue we have

(Gen 1:27 KJV)  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

For those who tend toward male chauvinism this wall is put up to be run into.  While God is distinctly male the woman is also created in His image.  This was not an issue when I was growing up and I don’t think it was an issue for the preceding 6,000 years.  It is an issue today when we have our major institutions controlled by people who hate the God of the Bible.

homo unius libri

Opus 2021-153: Speculation

I sometimes get the impression that the Bible was edited to leave out certain details.  We have such questions as “Where did the children of Adam and Eve find mates?”  The Bible doesn’t say.  My mind was in that mode when I read the third verse of the Bible which says,

(Gen 1:3 KJV)  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

What it does not describe is the scratching sound of roaches looking for a dark place to hide.  They have been scrambling ever since.  I am sure you have seen articles, posts, blogs, tweets or whatever about how roaches have been around for millions of years, unchanged.  We hear how they would survive a nuclear holocaust.  You know the kind of “science” I am talking about.

Was their some unfathomable connection between the Wisdom described in Proverbs and the cockroach?

(Pro 8:27 KJV)  When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:

I am not trying to proclaim any new doctrines or share a prophetic insight.  It is just that my mind tends to run in strange paths.  I invite you to join me for just a moment in the glory of speculation.  My observations are at least as valid as those of Al Gore or AOC.

homo unius libri

Opus 2021-049: Deja Vu

Will conservatives eventually be forced to flee and hide?  Probably, and that goes double for genuine Christians.  They tend to be conservatives because liberal values are anathema to the Bible.  Today I came across something that reminds me this is nothing new.

Thursday I finished reading through the Bible with the book of Revelation.  Friday I started again in Genesis with a desire to not be hurried, to spend some time in contemplation and study.  I was looking into the fact that the Hebrew word for God, Elohim, is plural.  

(Gen 1:1 KJV) In the beginning God [Elohim] created the heaven and the earth.

Keep in mind that Judaism believes in only one God.  Christians believe in one God also but have the concept of the Trinity with deals with this seeming contradiction.

As I was reading about the implications for Christians and the doctrine of the Trinity Adam Clarke, an 18th century Bible scholar, quoted someone named Simeon ben Joachi (Yohai).  I may write about that quote some other time.  What struck me as I read a little bit was the predicament that Rabbi Joachi found himself in.

“In the Talmudic legend, Rabbi Simeon made some adverse remarks about the Roman occupation of Judaea and when this was reported to the government authorities he was obliged to flee for his life. Together with his son, Eleazar, he lived in a cave for thirteen years.”

This comes from a site called My Jewish Learning.  

I thought it was interesting that speaking out against the government had the same response in the second century from the Roman Empire that it is having today in the American Congress.

Watch your mouth and stay safe.  History may repeat itself but we can at least make it work for the privilege.

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-098: Headlines: In the Marrow

I have been on the road for over a week as I begin to write this.  I am visiting with good friends on my final stop, staying at their house and letting them feed me.  One of the focal points of the visit is an ongoing dialogue, i.e. discussion, i.e. argument, about just about anything but focused on certain theological issues.  My friend is a King James Only guy and very serious about it but he still has not cried, “Heretic!”  He may mumble it in his sleep but not when his free will is operating.

On one of our tangents he brought up an article he had come across having to do with paleontology.  It was an interview with a researcher called Marry Schweitzer.  In her research she believes she has come across what appears to be soft tissue in the marrow area of some fossils and she thinks it is something that deserves study.  If that wiggles your antennae then go to the site and read the article. 

That isn’t what I wanted to comment on.

There were a couple of quotes that she offered in passing that I thought we important.  She is offering a theory that is in conflict with the Established Wisdom.  She says that if she is correct then scientists will either need to reevaluate the accepted age of the fossils or the theories about how fossils are formed.  Either one threatens some people and is resisted.

She is good with that.  She says she expects good science to challenge her theory.  She gets a little up tight when they reject her data.  She kind of says, “Bring it on!”  because that is good science.  If you know anything about the genuine scientific theory you will agree with her.  Then she said,

“I learned the role of science is to disprove, not prove.”  (emphasis in original)

When researchers offer an hypothesis they are supposed to set up experiments that will show a true/false answer.  In most cases is it impossible to prove a theory because you might have missed the one thing that would throw it out.  After enough people have failed in trying to debunk it, it is promoted to an established theory which is often accepted as fact.

Something else she said resonated with me because it echoed something I read somewhere else and liked.

“If you step back a little bit and let God be God I don’t think there’s any contradiction at all between the Bible and what we see in nature. He is under no obligation to meet our expectations. He is bigger than that.”

My basic belief when it comes to where life came from is found in Genesis 1:1.

(Gen 1:1 KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The how and when I am willing to debate and listen to good science as they try to figure it out.  The why is where I run into problems.  I have no fear of good honest science.  The problem we run into is that much of the science that is being made popular is not good science.  It is based on models that were set up to show the desired results or it is edited to cut out anything that goes against the accepted truth.

An interesting article worth reading.


homo unius libri

Opus 2016-145: Evolutionary Tangent

Evolution by chance?  Really?  I took this tangent because I just finished dropping my wife off at the airport.  I arrived at my breakfast spot and began my worship with meditation on the Lord’s Supper.  One of the first things that comes to my mind is the safe trip I just had.  Today I had a moment of awe that my old clunker had made it again.  Think of how many moving parts your car has.  How many have to fail for the car to fail?  Think of the times your car has just stopped.  A broken timing belt will do it.  Once a loose wire to a coil did it.  A crazy driver on his phone could do it to you.

It doesn’t take much to stop a simple machine like a car.  You say a car is not simple?  It is when you compare it to the human body that some claim is the product of evolution.  It doesn’t take much to mess up the whole process.  Have you ever tried to install software and missed one step?  Have you ever tried to send an e-mail and get one letter wrong?  Now look at a string of DNA.  It makes your password look like a kindergarten project.

Evolution is a theory that had logic behind it.  When I was a kid it made sense.  Of course when I was a kid I thought that Roy Rogers could actually shoot his revolver from a running horse and hit something.  Darwinian evolution through natural selection is an attempt to explain the questions of “Where did we come from?” and the bigger question of “What is the purpose of life?”  Since the reality is much more complicated than Darwin could imagine his theory is full of holes and flaws.  It is just a theory and real science will look at new knowledge about the complexity of life and say, “Back to the drawing board.”

Might I suggest,

(Genesis 1:1 KJV)  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Take it from there.  That is a starting point but if you don’t start at the right point you never get anywhere.

homo unius libri

Opus 2016-105: Basic Beliefs: Imago Dei

I was listening to a hymn that spoke of “I am the Potter, you are the clay”.

This is an expression of two points of Christian belief that are paradoxical.

One is that we are nothing compared to God.  This is what the song was singing about.  We are the created beings.  He is the Creator.  That gives him the right to do with us as He pleases.  This is expressed in different ways in the Old and New Testaments.  An early expression is,

(Isaiah 64:8 KJV)  But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

Generally speaking the clay on the wheel doesn’t tell the potter how to shape it.

The other is that we are created in the Image of God.  This is the Imago Dei. 

(Genesis 1:26 KJV)  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

This is the reason that Christians can turn the other cheek with dignity.  This is why Christians can have a belief in the future.  Our God cares about us.  He has instilled something in us that is not in the animals, plants of rocks of the field.  We are a unique creation and that governs not only how we relate to the world but how we relate to each other. 

This is why Christians have been at the front of the battle against slavery and its modern jargon of “human trafficking”.  When a slave is declared to be your brother that means you must treat him as a brother even if the status of slave is legal.  You also know that if you don’t treat him right then the Father of you both will meet you behind the woodshed and He will not be happy.  That can be a powerful motivator.

This is why Christians have been the creative force behind ending slavery and creating hospitals, orphanages, food banks, and the rule of law. 

If you are a believer you need to understand this.  If you are not a believer you need to understand this.  It could make your day, or ruin it.  Or make it by ruining it.

homo unius libri

Opus 2015-452: Tending to Gaia

My wife yelled at me from the other room.

Her message was that if I wanted to refute fears about climate change all I needed to do was refer to Psalm 104.  She also acknowledged that it would not have much influence on your garden style pagan.  It should however make a difference to people who claim to believe in Jesus.

I made a note and read through the chapter later.  I found the focal point for those who fear climate change to be verse 4.

(Psalms 104:5 KJV)  Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.

This is a statement, not a question. 

This is a statement that God made the world.  He made it in such a way that man will not destroy it.  He made provision for anything we can throw at it.

Does that mean we are to deliberately be destructive?  Are we to use 5,000 year old redwoods for toothpicks?  Are we to use the Grand Canyon for a landfill?  The answers are obvious but let me throw in the responsibility we are given along with the gift.  Two verses,

(Genesis 1:28 KJV)  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And,

(Genesis 2:15 KJV)  And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

We are in charge as stewards and caretakers. 

So don’t be afraid, be responsible.

homo unius libri

Opus 2015-180: On the Light Side

There are certain trade offs in life.  I believe that humans are different than the animals.  That is because, as a Christian, I believe that men are women are created in the image of God. 

(Genesis 1:27 KJV)  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

What does that mean?  A lot of controversy is involved.  One of the interesting things about being created in the image of God is that we are not the best at everything.  Almost any animal that lives is better than we are at something.  We cannot walk across the ceiling like a fly.  We cannot live under water like a fish.  We cannot fly like a bird.

What generated my thinking here was something I read on a blog dealing with preparation for a power outage and the need for light.  The author of Stealth Survival said,

“One of our most severe shortcomings is our inability to see in the darkness. Our night vision is extremely poor and pales in comparison to other creatures present in our world.”

I knew that cats could see in the dark but what the author was saying seemed to imply that seeing in the dark is better in a large number of animals.  On the scale of life we have a very limited ability to see at night.

So we compensate by other means.  No animal has come up with fire or flashlights.  Those are the ways that humans respond to our lack of night vision.  We apply the image of God by being creative.  In so doing we not only drive back the darkness but produce a devise that can scare away the creatures of the shadows.  Fires will keep animals away.  A bright light will scare them.

Be grateful that the image of God makes you adaptable and superior.

homo unius libri