Oh Elaine… Goodbye Dear…

My girlfriend and colleague was having dinner with a friend last night, she passed out and never regained consciousness… she died… that’s it! She’s gone… she’ll never come to my home again for tea… she won’t be waiting for me Monday morning to go get our coffee together… a morning ritual we had observed for over a year… since I came to this office… I loved her… I’ll miss her…

Her whole life wasn’t very long… she served in the Navy and was currently working on her computer science degree… she was very smart, a very hard worker, she loved her job, her family, and her friends… she loved to fish and to cook… she was in her early 30’s… her life so short.

Scripture says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27.

Elaine has met God now… and if she could reach back, what would she say?

It’s real.. God IS real… the judgement is REAL!…. don’t delay…

We don’t know how short life is…. we don’t know when we will see God… She and I talked often of God’s love for her and she knew the truth.

As for those of us who remain… Will our debt towards God be marked “paid” through Jesus’ death on the cross or will we be judged to be “in debt”?

The question really isn’t, “What will you do with Jesus?” rather… it is… “What have you done with Him?”… at least that will be the question when we each as individuals face God.

My heart goes out to Elaine’s family… who are heart broken over the loss of their daughter, sister, aunt, and her friends all of whom really love her.

I’ll miss you Elaine… Goodbye Dear Friend… I won’t forget you!… I’ll look for you on my appointed day…..

On Power

Have you ever considered that we (mankind) have a problem with power?
In Tolkien’s fairy tales Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, the primary topic of each is the quest to defeat an evil would-be-lord’s attempt to own all power. In reflection it seems to me that the one ‘thing’ man strives for perhaps more than anything else is power. In some cases it is the quest for power, in others it’s the display of power that fuels our economy and our lives.

Power in all its forms is inextricably linked with pride. We take pride in ourselves when we can exhibit power over ourselves, others, and our possessions. In today’s society many consider power to be a positive thing, such as in being the ‘Master of Our Own Destiny.’

But we are only kidding ourselves if we think power and/or its pursuit is a good thing.

It is power that fueled Lucifer’s quest for God’s throne; power of knowledge that induced Eve to pick up the apple. Often, it’s the pursuit of power that drives men and women in the workforce to climb the corporate ladder, run for office, or own a business. Power is the reason people rape, murder, and abuse other people. It’s power that drives countries to depossess other people of their property and lands.

Look around our world today and one way or another most of us are trying to exhibit power in our individual lives. It is this real quest to own and/or utilize power and its resident co-evil pride that utterly destroys man. It abases us as we try to elevate ourselves to preeminence above God.

Even in our games it’s all about power. The Massively Multiplayer Online-Role Playing Game (MMORPG), The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar the players have characters that achieve “levels”. Each level exhibits its own “power”. When fighting a “bad guy” one looks at their own level and compares it to the “bad guy’s” level to see who has the most “power.” In the Lord of Rings Trivial Pursuit game power is exhibited by knowing more than the other players. These forms of power would seem innocuous at worst. After all, we all enjoy them.

Back to Tolkien’s heroes… they were humble, and this humility gives us (the reader) a sense that their attitude was just and right. In all my readings I’ve not found even one person who expressed that these heroes were stupid or foolish. I don’t think we could understand that it’s better to be humble than to pursue power in and of or for ourselves. We should consider where our sense of morality (right and wrong) comes from. This is an excellent example of myth containing truth.

I agree with Tolkien, that only Divinity has the right to own and exhibit power. Jesus said he is sitting at the right hand of Power. That tells us clearly that it is God who has the right to power. Jesus also said he has all authority… that IS power… real power.

We are creatures not The Creator. If we focus on God first and foremost as we ought and humble ourselves to Him and His guidance He will demonstrate power on our behalf. What a wonderful, peaceful position to be in…. That where The Creator takes care of us (of me)…

On humility… God tells us to, “… consider others as better than [ourselves]..” Christ said, “No greater love hath any man than that he lay down his life for a friend.” We’re also told that the second commandment is “… to love others as we love ourselves.” These actions keep us humble and defeat the quest for power… humility and power are mutually exclusive…

I need to learn to be more humble!

Fall from Perfection: Tolkien & Christianity

The more I study and learn about J. R. R. Tolkien, his contemporaries (i.e., C. S. Lewis) and their fairy stories / myths the more fascinated I become. It’s not just my love of the story. It’s the depth of their work and the realities behind it that are so… “rich” (for lack of a better word)… I can spend the foreseeable future researching, reading, thinking, and writing/blogging… about the authors and their efforts… and not grow tired of it.

It’s “rich” because it has a true foundation: God the Creator, the Word (Logos), the Spirit and their perfection and reality. If these weren’t real, what then? …. Nothing, it wouldn’t matter… there would be no resounding thrill in our hearts when the good guy (Frodo) destroys the ring, because there could be no morality… no good… no bad… without God.

Tolkien believed that there is only a story to be told when you have a “fall” from creation perfection.

Think about this for a moment…

If Eve hadn’t been deceived…. if Adam hadn’t willfully disobeyed… before that…. if Lucifer hadn’t coveted the Supreme Position… what would we have? A very boring, flat, dry… story… history… life…. what would we talk about? What would we appreciate?

More importantly… what would we “be” without “the choice”… between good and evil?

We certainly couldn’t be “redeemed” if we weren’t “fallen”… while on the one hand, Christ would not have needed to lay down His life for us, He wouldn’t have had to be brutally beaten and that would have been a good thing…. then again, we wouldn’t really know just how bad we really are… how much He loves each one of us… the lengths to which He’d go… We wouldn’t know what grace is… nor know humility in the presence of God… we’d have knowledge of His Superiority, but not of His grace and love…

Scripture points out that there’s a very real battle going on between principalities… God and His followers versus Lucifer and the other fallen angels…. Do you see it? Do you want to?

Will we deny ourselves and follow God or will we try to agrandize ourselves and follow Lucifer? Is our choice humility or pride?

What makes us love myths so much?

As I mentioned Thursday, initially C.S. Lewis thought myths are lies while J.R.R. Tolkien completely disagreed.

Patrick Curles writes in Tolkien’s Impact in Literature and Life

There are truths, Tolkien said, that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen – they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths. We have come from God, Tolkien said, and only through myth, through story telling, can we aspire to the life we were made for with God. To write and/or read myth, Tolkien believed, was to meditate on the most important truths of life.

Scripture tells us that God wrote knowledge of Himself on our individual hearts. This is born out by the fact that, irrespective of geographical location, the one thing common to all societies that have ever existed is that they all show signs (archeologically) of religion. I’ve heard it said that “religion” is man reaching towards God (although Christianity is God reaching out to man). If there were no God, why would man strive for so long trying to find Him?

I think man not only tries to find God, but that man does also search for truth, unfettered by modern philosophy. It’s paradoxical that man doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own actions. It’s this perspective that keeps man from pushing too hard to find God and leads him to embrace relativism… leads him away from God.

Frequently you’ll hear that there is no absolute truth (but the sentence itself is making an absolute statement and is therefore self-defeated.) Good myths (as opposed to evil or bad myths) give us an opportunity to learn, to think, to gain knowledge. Those that are well written allow us to walk in the hero’s shoes, to feel with him or her the full gamut of emotions. It’s far more than escapism. They enrich us as individuals. True, well written, myths are a feast for our minds and spirits, our inner eyes and ears. Oh yes, and our hearts.

There’s truth in Tolkien’s work that we can recognise, contemplate, and appreciate. If you’ve not read Tolkien I do encourage you to read first The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings. If you’ve read him once, I urge you to read him again… that’s what I’m going to do…

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