Opus 2026-103: Celestial Changing Room

One of the controversial concepts we have in the Christian world is, “Does God change?’  It’s not a fair question because it has so many nuances and so many different understandings that it became useless.  As in the question of, “It all depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is…”  This all depends on what you mean by change and what aspect of God is changing.

We have this simple statement,

(Mal 3:6 KJV)  For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

That could be taken in a simple, literal, and biblical sense and the way it is quoted shows that it is taken that way.  What confuses me is the refusal to keep reading.  Just a few verses further we have the familiar,

(Mal 3:10 KJV)  Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Notice that God is saying if Israel will obey then He will change what He is doing.  Change?  Sounds like it to me.

You also run into problems in other places.  Take for instance, the announcement by God in Genesis 6, 

(Gen 6:6 KJV)  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

That seems clear to me but my son said his pastor went to great lengths to say something different.

He then proclaimed He is going to destroy the entire human race and just a few versus later, we find that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  Either these blanket declarations are hyperbole, God wasn’t aware of Noah, or God changed his mind.

A way of approaching that occurred to me today is that we keep wanting to look at God in His dealings with us as a complete picture.  That cannot be.  God is so universal and complex that we can’t even begin to approach His total reality.  Jesus told us that if we have seen Him, we’ve seen the Father, but even there we don’t know the depths of Jesus.

We see what we need.  God never changes in the sense that all of the things that we need are present, along with all of the things that the rest of humanity needs, and everything that the universe needs, and all those things that God has in reserve that we will never know about.

So, no, God doesn’t change.  What changes is our view of him and what he chooses to reveal to us.  It sounds like word games to me and it probably is but the question remains.  I hope you find an answer for yourself.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-468: New terms: Academic Brain Dysfunction

In my thought journey, I keep coming across people who have certificates on their wall and letters behind their name who think they have the right to pontificate on major issues.  When I go to see my doctor, which I did recently, I choose the doctor not because he has certificates, but because he has impressed me that his mind and his understanding have grown beyond his degrees and his official status.  I go to see him because I feel he is unusual in the field of primary care medicine.  I will continue to work with him as long as he continues to keep thinking.

Other doctors I have been around take the company line, swallow it hole, and spew back the nonsense that they have been told.  They show no evidence of thinking it through themselves.  They show no evidence of reading or paying attention to what’s happening in our society.  This is true in just about every area of study.

I fight this most in the area of my biblical studies and my theology.  The current burr under my saddle in theological terms would have to do with the immutability of God.  Put in simple everyday language, that means that God does not change.  I agree with that statement because the Bible has statements like this,

(Mal 3:6 KJV)  For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

To paraphrase a quote from Princess bride, I keep wanting to say, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”  The reason for that is that there are numerous places in the scripture where it talks about God changing his mind.  In the King James that is often built around the word “repent” .  One of the classic lines that proceeds Noah finding grace in the eyes of the Lord is this verse,

Genesis 6:6 (KJV) And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Now, I don’t care what your theological persuasion is.  You may be a total atheist.  But when someone repents of something that means they change their mind.  It means they have a different idea than they had before.  It would seem that it is possible for God to have different thoughts.

Is God immutable?  Yes if you understand it in the proper way.  But that does not mean that He is a dead piece of stone.  Several places in scripture God mocks the idols of the pagans.  He talks about them having eyes, but they cannot see; feet, but they cannot walk; mouths but they cannot talk and so forth.  The implication is that He, the living God, can see, walk and talk.  Now when you see things they interact with your neurons and make your brain perceive something that wasn’t there before.  That is literally, change.  I understand that God is not physical so He does not have nurons, but if God is different from the idols because He can see, and He can feel and He can hear, every time He does one of those things He is changing.  So don’t give me this nonsense that God cannot “change”.

I started watching a video by someone who had impressed me once, but has been losing ground ever since and he got off on this idea that God cannot change.  He was taking it all the way to the wall.  His statements were without any kind of waiver or qualification.  He even quoted a famous theologian, one that I had heard of, one that I stopped listening to a long time ago when he declared war on non-Calvinists.  That theologian really got worked up and said that if there is one molecule anywhere in the entire universe, that is a maverick molecule, outside of the total control of God, then all our theology, all of our beliefs, everything about who we are as Christians is meaningless.  Excuse me.  My God is bigger than that.  What if God made that molecule a maverick?

The problem with being an academic is that you think your theories are above the facts.  How someone with many books to his credit, and I’m sure multiple degrees, could declare that everything is void if there is one spec out of place has an undue respect for his own insight.  I would encourage him to stay in his office and write out deep thoughts on sticky notes and post them on his window so that he doesn’t have to look out and see the real world.  I would even encourage for him to make videos and post them.  One of the great things about YouTube is, I don’t have to watch.

I’m sure this rant will continue in other places of the times.  Until then, keep your brain in gear and your Bible open.  It is amazing how well those two concepts work together.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-181: Grace

(Exo 33:13 KJV)  Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.

When you read this out of context, it sounds like a glorious New Testament idea.  How wonderful to know His grace, how wonderful to follow, wonderful to be His people.  What doesn’t show up in the context is that this is immediately after Moses was given the law on the mountain.  Not only was it given to him by God once, but he had the carve it out by hand himself a second time.  I think the law was fresh in his mind.  I think he knew what it contained, and what it said.  And yet here we have him talking about grace, and about knowing God.

The New Testament focuses on grace.  Actually, Paul focuses on grace.  Jesus never mentioned it.  Paul’s emphasis is scripture.  But we need the balance of the entire Bible, and we need to realize that the law is not evil if we take it in the way in which it was intended.

It would also be good for us to realize that the grace talked about here is the same grace that we find in regard to Noah.  People like to talk about Noah, finding grace in the eyes of the Lord.  

(Gen 6:8 KJV)  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

It would seem that Moses also had found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  I sometimes wonder if Paul ever read his Old Testament in the original Hebrew, or whether he just listened to what the rabbis told him and quotes from the Talmud.  Grace was not a new discovery that he made.  He simply took a truth that was being ignored and brought it into the light.

Grace and peace.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-038: Ode to Old: Goals

One of the data points I have seen repeated recently is that there has been a decline in life expectancy in the United States.  If my memory serves me, it is most pronounced in white men.  Since there are many factors involved in how long you live, it is not a statistic that worries me too much.  It could simply be a case of the hippie generation reaching the age when their early experiments with drugs and alcohol can no longer be denied.  It could be a genetic factor related to recent surges in immigration.  It could be a fluke.

Like many statistical announcements we need to keep in mind that the average over a large population has no real relevance to you as an individual.  If I live in a community of alcoholics and hear that the incidence of liver disease is skyrocketing I don’t worry for myself if I don’t drink.  I might put more into trying to influence my friends but the numbers are meaningless because of my life choices.

So how long should we expect to live?  One of the expressions that has been around for a long time is three-score and ten, or seventy years.  I don’t know if it is in other cultures but it is found in the Bible.  I have already achieved three-score and ten.  That seems to be the basic promise given for life span.  As one old gentleman said, “I am now living on borrowed time.”

The next is four-score.  It is found in the same verse as the 70.

(Psa 90:10 KJV)  The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

I am not sure what is involved in this strength but I am already half way between 70 and 80.  If I make it to that we will go for 120.

(Gen 6:3 KJV)  And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

This last one was given during the time when people had been living hundreds of years.  I am not trying to announce promises or establish a doctrine of age but it is interesting.

My hope is that I will go the same way my dad went, in the middle of the night with no signs of stress.  And I am ready.  Any time, Lord.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-022: Forms of Government, part 1 of 5, Father Knows Best

The interaction of Christians with their government has always been an issue but what is the most appropriate form of government?  Societies develop differing kinds of structures to make it possible to live together.  Even small tribes have a hierarchy even if it seems rather informal.  We see a lot of types of leadership mentioned in the Bible but do not get a clear teaching about forms of government. 

The first human organization demonstrated by people in the Bible would seem to be the patriarchy.  Although we refer to Abraham we see the seeds in Noah.

(Genesis 6:18 KJV)  But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

Noah would give orders and his children would obey.  Eventually they will move out of the area and set up their own families.  It worked for small groups.  The first mention we have of kings and kingdoms involves Babel and we know how that turned out.  That was only two generations after Noah.

Abram, later Abraham, left the big city with its kings and became a nomad.  This continued the tradition of patriarchs among God’s people.  It worked well, unless you were Joseph, until famine forced them to Egypt.  Through the time of captivity they maintained an awareness of their tribe but no government seems to have developed.  They had a Pharaoh but they were not Egyptians.

To be continued...

homo unius libri