The REAL Question
The question is NOT - "What would Jesus do?"
The question IS - "What will YOU do with Jesus?"
The question is NOT - "What would Jesus do?"
The question IS - "What will YOU do with Jesus?"
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 heros 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...
Different topic tonight… I was on business travel this week, at the airport I stopped in a bookstore to find reading material to get me through at least the 2.5 hours to my destination.
Admittedly the bookstores in airports are smaller, but most of them have a fairly wide range of material. I look for books to enlighten me as opposed to grieving the Spirit within. Have any of you realized this is NOT an easy task?
I found a nice selection of different books on Islam, Wicca and other religions… but wait, where are the books on Scriptural Christianity? There’s even a whole section devoted to “New Age”, yet no section for Christianity. I can find a wide variety of novel type books offering alternate views of Jesus, yet nothing on the Jesus of the Bible. There are several books about religious tolerance, but have you noticed they aren’t very tolerant of Christianity?
The majority of this material is designed for one purpose only… to provide an alternate option to salvation. Oh yeah, haven’t you heard? Man can now set the rules… anything he wants them to be… If we don’t like one commandment, well, we’ll just ignore it or we’ll make up our own stuff… more palatable, more to our liking; stuff that makes more sense to us. We say to ourselves… Wait! Why do this God’s way? We can form Him to our image and then be able to basically do what ever we want. Isn’t that great? We can lay out the rules of whatever philosophy we want, we can even restate history (as is the case in one popular book) to our liking. And then we’ll be really free! Won’t we?
In college I took anthropology and the Professor told us that the one thing that was found in every society, ancient and modern alike was evidence of religion. Isn’t that interesting? Every society looks for God. I’m sure you can remember hearing about Roman and Greek mythology… so just imagine everyone, everywhere always trying to find God… lends credence to the old saying, “nothing new under the sun”, doesn’t it? (Which by-the-way is Ecclesiastes 1:9.)
Do you have any idea about why every society shows evidence of religion? The first chapter of the book of Romans tells us that God made the truth evident to us. Another Scripture passage says He wrote knowledge of Himself on every heart. In Romans it goes on to say, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.”
Man has not changed… even today, s/he tries to account for God; even the atheist who tries to push Him away. If God truly didn’t exist why would the atheist work so hard to try to kill Him? Under the guise of “tolerance” others work just as hard to make Him not matter, to make truth about God irrelevant.
All of this boils down to one thing and one thing alone…………..
People simple do NOT want to be accountable for their actions. They don’t want to acknowledge that they are (1) much, much less than holy ( hey this is me too... I’m right here beside you – I’m not better than you) and (2) folks don’t want to accept that there’s a huge price to pay for not being spotless in God’s eyes.
Even though you spend your whole life living by a creed, any creed, or none at all… what will you say when you are finally face-to-face with God? God gave you free will for a reason, He doesn’t want robots…. How have you used your gift of free will?
If you really want to know truth about God… you don’t need me… all you have to do is honestly ask God to reveal the truth about Jesus to you… find out for yourself. Because when you do see God, He isn’t going to be asking you about what I did with the truth…. He’ll be asking you.... about you.
The last part of that section of Romans 1 says, "... so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools..."
What book did I buy? "Taming Your Tongue".... :-)
Yesterday, I talked about how important truth is and how it's not "my" truth. In that post I also quoted scripture that says we can't know/understand and we can't do good in and of ourselves.
I'd like to clarify something... both of those statements in Romans are talking about us BEFORE we accepted Christ as our Savior. If you've never done that then those Scriptures are talking about you. But, if you have been saved then they are talking about your "old self", the one that was crucified with Christ. Now you're redeemed and John 16:13 applies, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak..." So, if you're born again the Holy Spirit, which lives in you will illumine Scripture for you. But, before that (that is before you accepted Christ) you could not on your own understand. In fact, 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." This basically explains that God understands the unsaved folks will think Scripture is nuts and they do don't they?
It's also very important that we all understand we are not to argue over the details. As long as we have saving faith, the rest will get sorted out later.
Secondly, I'd like to explain a couple of other facts about me....
I have no preference that God says A or God says B... I want to simply know what exactly God says. When I attend a Church, I'm not looking for one where the Pastor preaches about things the way I "believe" them to be... rather I look for a Church where the Pastor tells me what the Bible says... I'm not looking for anyone to interpret Scripture for me... I want to know what God says... because I take Him at His word. (I talk about the Scriptures that support this in several of my other posts, predominately under "Truth" on your right.)
I can accept that God isn't into tricking me, nor keeping things obscure from me, and that He laid what He wants from me out clearly. He expects me to study His word so that I can obey 2 Timothy 2:15, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth." and 1 Peter 3:15, " ... sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence".
I'd like to share with you the fundamental approach about interpreting Scripture. Now, I'm not going to bore you to death by repeating verbatim hermenuetic text books. But, lets look at this with logical clear thought.
As with many things there really are very clear steps to correctly interpreting Scripture:
Some other points to consider...
Scripture must be internally consistent... there can be no contradictions within Scripture. If there are then it all is waste. What good is truth if it's not always truth... that would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it? This doesn't mean that we have to understand all the points of Scripture (example coming right up)... the point is that they are either things I don't completely understand or they are inconsistencies... if they are the later I want nothing to do with it... The example of this is God being 1 in 3 persons... I don't understand this concept, but I can accept it as true any way... fact is this side of the veil I don't need to understand it... do I?
The truths of Scripture must be livable... again, what good would it be if we couldn't do what God wants us to do?
In my earlier post I said I'm not an authority over anyone, I meant that, and I am not. And I truly don’t want to offend anyone. Scripture says, "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city..." Proberbs 18:19. But, if someone is offended because of the truth I am sorry, but I can't help that.
Not being an authority over anyone else and not wanting to offend anyone doesn't mean I can't see errors, falsehoods, and contradictions. In an area where truth is vital to our ability to freely exist, to overlook the error and not insist on truth is perhaps worse than the original error. For without truth we are in bondage to lies. It doesn't matter what the lie is, where the lie is put forth, nor by whom, we must fight to keep the truth visible.
With that said, there have been several comments recently, that do contain serious error and I’m going to take it one item at a time. Please bear with me as you can see from the dates of past posts, I’m not the quickest on the draw here.
Before I get into it I want to irrefutably state that I am also not an authority on truth per se. I do NOT advocate a “truth according to The Wilder Place”, nor according to any other human being. I do not own truth, nor do I generate it. I don’t make it up, nor do I insist that my understanding is the “only” truth or truth at all for that matter. The truths I’m talking about don’t come from man at all… they come from God.
Romans 3:12 says, “… There is none who does good, there is not even one.” Not I, not you, not my Pastor, not your Pastor….No one! So if none of us “do” good, one reason is that we can’t in and of ourselves know good. And that my friends is exactly where I’m going with this. We (neither you nor I) can on our own know (understand, comprehend) that which is good. In fact, the previous verse in Romans 3:11 says, “There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” There you have it… from God’s own mouth! We cannot understand.
So… where does that leave us in our quest for truth… we cannot interpret Scripture on our own, as men and women - we can't get together as a group nor adopt the truth of another human being - we must realize that God, if He exists, and if He is omniscient (and He is both) then He knows exactly how to say what He means and means what He says.
We err greatly when we try to make Scripture say what we want it to say and in any manner make up our own interpretations. There are lots of good books (and some information on the Web) concerning a sound hermeneutic.
FYI: Hermeneutics is a philosophical technique concerned with the interpretation and understanding of texts. It may be described as the theory of the interpretation and understanding of a text on the basis of the text itself. (From the Wikipedia)
In fact on this issue Scripture also says, Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”
If your salvation depends upon you understanding Scripture correctly then why trust to anything other than what God actually says?
Finally, perhaps a dialogue as opposed to a monologue... first I'd like to say, I'm not offended at all by what other people think and/or believe and thank you very much for commenting... and I welcome the opportunity to discuss varying view points.... so please post again... but also I want to express, I do not intend nor do I have any authority over anyone else on these issues!
A couple of verses immediately pop into my mind... the first I referenced in the title of this post... "Come let us reason together" from Isaiah 1:18 and even clearer is 1 John 5:13, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know ..." and verse 20, "And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true..."
The idea with these verses is that we can "know" and we can "reason". I love it when someone says I only have 'blind' faith... that's just not true, I really think about these things... but in ALL cases I look to Scripture and to Scripture only for the answers.
A (much welcomed) visitor posted the following:
I hope this does not offend anyone, but we do know what Gods best is in ALL cases of sickness. It’s healing. Isa 53: 4-5 tells us that Jesus bore sickness and disease for us so that we could come to him and receive what he died for- Healing, health and redemption from the curse that Adam brought on this earth. The only glory God gets out of sickness is when we are healed of it. Under the New covenant or New Testament, we see the will of God in the life of Jesus. He healed all who were oppressed by the devil. (Acts 10: 38.) John 14: 9 and Hebrews 1: 1-3 tells us that Jesus was the express image of God. If you view God through the Old Testament only, you get an incomplete picture of God. Jesus came to reveal the completeness of God and demonstrated it with his lifestyle. Where ever he went, he healed the sick. So, today, the will of God is to heal ALL who are sick. Most everyone knows God heals, the problem is, they do not know if he will heal them! There is where the problem lies. But to say that God uses sickness to get Glory is inaccurate.
When I say, I look toward Scripture the translation I look at is important... I use the New American Standard 1995 Update Bible. This particular translation was derived from the orginal languages and is one of the truest in the sense of word meaning and usage. Additionally, it notes where there are differences between early manuscripts and sometimes that can be informative. There is also no paraphrasing in the NASB. I choose not to use a paraphrased Bible because I think God (the inventor of language) knew perfectly well what He intended to say and very carefully chose the words He used in breathing the Bible.
Point 1: I'd like to address the exact words God chose to use in the referenced verses.
Isaiah 53:4-5 says in full text,
(Reference New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Is 53:4-5). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.)
As you can see it doesn't say anything about sickness and disease, nor does it say anything about coming to Him for healing. It says that "by His scourging we are healed." Simply means we are (not 'will be', rather active voice here) healed because he took the punishment for us (the "chastening for our well-being").
Letting Scripture interpret Scripture see also 1 Peter 2:24, "and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
Point 2: "The only glory God gets out of sickness is when we are healed of it." I take issue with this statement because that limits God. I think God gets glory a lot of ways from sickness. Literally, I am extremely hard of hearing. I've asked for God to heal my ears, but so far the answer has been, "No." And, I can give Him ALL glory for NOT healing me.... Romans 8:28, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." The next verse goes on to tell us exactly what that purpose is... "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren."
The word "ALL" in verse 28 is all inclusive, nothing is left out... including my hearing... you bet, I can thank God and praise Him for my hearing exactly the way it is... because obviously (since God can't lie) he intended my hearing to work for good... whose?.... Mine ;-)
Just by those words I've posted in the previous sentence... I've given God glory... in the middle of being less than perfectly healthy... I also have numerous other health issues... I'm diabetic... I was legally blind for 17 years (that one God did chose to heal ;-)... But there's a couple of other points as well...
First of all... sometimes God has to take us to the bottom of the barrel before we'll look to Him... that's unfortunate but true... I myself was pretty stubborn about accepting Jesus as Lord of my life... and sometimes sickness is a result of sin.... that's consequences, which though God loves ALL of us, He does frequently let us suffer consequences... on this note though I do agree in part to what you said, perhaps (because I do not know God's full and complete will) it is God's perfect will that we be 100% healed... but we make choices that keep that from happening.
Secondly, (and I can't think of the verse's reference this moment) my being sick enables me to be sympathetic to others being sick... If I've never been ill how can I help you when you are ill. For one thing, it gives me an opportunity to "let my light shine before men" in doctor's offices ;-)
Yes, I do agree that Jesus was the express image of God, and is in fact God. I'm not sure why you think I look at Christ only through the Old Testament... please post more on this... but I don't... and yes I agree God does indeed heal... in fact... I had an opportunity in 1972 to apply James 5:14, "Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord".
My then 3 month old daughter was running a very high temperature. I couldn't get it down. I even tried (the old fashioned... now) alcohol bath... nothing was working... my husband was overseas... I took her to the emergency room... all alone... my first born and only child (at that point)... the doctors ran a ton of tests, finally they did a spinal tap... they came back to me and said we were lucky paralysis hadn't set in yet... she was diagnosed with spinal meningitis... I immediately called my pastor... he came with a couple of deacons.. they prayed over her and annoited her with oil... I then asked the doctors to do another test... they did... they said they must have made a mistake her spinal fluid was fine.... they didn't make a mistake... God healed my daughter right then and right there.
Point 3: You said, "Where ever He went, He healed the sick." Yes He did, but the express reason for the miracles Jesus did was to prove He was the promised Christ. In fact, the Old Testament (Isa 35:5) predicted He'd do exactly this. But, the signs were the way people would know He really is the Christ.
Point 4: and I promise my last... while Jesus walked the earth he also raised the dead. He did this on more than one occasion. It is God's expressed will that "none should perish"... but we do all die... and will continue to do so until Christ retrieves us to Himself... but, He doesn't raise the dead anymore... but praises... He does still heal ;-)
Life can be hard... does anyone really dispute that? It doesn't seem to matter whether you're rich or famous (or both) or poor and homeless... extremes... yes... but the point is that every one of us has problems... every single one of us... no matter where we are in life or in the world... albeit some of our problems may be significantly more tragic than others... and while some may be happy today... wait 5 minutes...
There are hundreds of people who think they know the answers... they write books... how to be rich, skinny, married, divorced... whatever it is you think you need to be happy... I guarantee you there's a book about it... Periodically someone thinks they've found THE answer and a new top 10 book is born... but that book gets shelved (pun intended)... life goes on... so do the problems... and the wonder-book of the moment is forgotten... ever thought... if even one of those books was right why don't things change?.... Seems like a book that really had the answers would be in the top 10 for longer than just a couple of months... wouldn't it?
My life's no different from yours... I have "issues"... better translated... "problems"... I'm getting older, kids live too far away... never see enough of the grandkids... work is hard and getting harder thanks to a new boss... over weight... diabetic... hard of hearing... get the picture.... but, you know what... I have so much joy in my heart, it makes me want to shout from the roof tops... I mean I'm... "I don't really need anything"... profoundly happy... why? I know what's really going on here... but MORE importantly I KNOW what comes next and it's soul-satisfyingly glorious!
It's all a matter of perspective.... if you're miserable... I bet you're looking in... focusing on yourself... thinking you and you alone have to come up with the solutions... or maybe you think you have the solution, but it's dependent on something you have to do... so maybe you buy a book....
There's one book that beats all the others hands-down... the #1 best seller of all time that really can put it all in perspective... it's the Bible... and it can answer all of life's guestions. I can take any event (absolutely any... Dad's suicide... husband's stroke... any) and find the solution... why I have a problem to begin with, what I should do about it... all talked about in the Bible... name me any other book like that... sharper than a two edged sword... I can find any answer in that book to any question about how I should or should not behave.... Have you ever thought about what it is? It's marvelous... It's a love letter... from God to man... me... you!
One time David (as in King David) was having it tough... he'd lost his job, his home... everything... his son was trying to kill him, he was sleeping in a cave... in Psalms, he started to ask God, "Why me?" But, he switched perspectives and started praising God for all the good things He'd done in David's life... before long David wasn't sad any longer... he was singing God's praises to the highest of heavens.
If you're a believer and you're unhappy... get back to basics.. pray about it, lay it at God's feet... pick up your Bible and start reading... Romans is great.. so is John ;-)
If you're not a believer what then... the Bible can solve your problems too... this entire thing called "life" is a process... a process of making a decision... a decision for Christ or against Him.... people choose not to believe because they do not want to be responsible to God for their actions... their pride stands in their way... they don't want a God telling them what they can and can't do.
But, did you know it's really all about love? The earth and everything on it were created to be a setting for a jewel... where's the jewel? Why, Honey, it's you. You are the jewel!!!
The whole book is about love... love of God the Creator for you!.... John 3:16 says it so well... "For God so loved the world [that's you too] that He gave His only son..." He didn't come for Himself... HE loves you so much, HE did everything necessary so YOU can have a relationship with HIM.
It's a choice... your choice... go at the world alone, with only you by your side... or go at it with God by your side... the choice is totally up to you.
I'm keeping you in my prayers... God loves you so much!!! He is not willing that you should perish and be separated from Him forever!... choose GOD and you'll find everything else falling into proper perspective.
When I started this blog I promised to write about "truth". I tried to show that truth is something absolute and real in a November 2005 blog entry. At that time, I also promised I'd try to answer the question about whether or not we can "know" truth.
It's interesting to note that one definition of the word "know" according to Merriam-Webster, I. (1996, c1993). Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary includes:
2 a : to be aware of the truth or factuality of : be convinced or certain of.
It is also the root of the word "knowledge", which begins several of its definitions with the word "fact"
2 a (1) : the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association.
I think it would be somewhat interesting (at least to myself) to do a study of the words that demonstrate our society's belief in the existence of truth and our ability to know it... but, I'll leave that for another time... maybe... sounds a little dull even to me.
Have you ever told a lie or known that someone else has told a lie? A lie is the opposite of a truth. The fact that you knew it was a lie, indicates you also knew the truth.
Our (mankind's) efforts in the sciences and technologies are all based on our ability to "know" the truth about something. History and Law are both based on our ability to know the facts (truth) about something that specifically did or did not happen. I could go on in this vein ad infinitum, or perhaps ad nauseum ;-)
There is so much evidence in our daily lives predicated upon our ability "to know truth" that to deny it in general would defy credulity.
When you really try to wrap your mind around the concepts of (1) no truth and/or (2) if there is truth we can't know it, our thoughts become like a pretzel and somewhat nonsensical. Why? Because there are absolute truths and we can know some of them. Note: I do not claim that we (collectively or individually) can know ALL truth.
Jesus said, "... you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32
When I was a little girl, I heard a story about a man who wondered about the streets of a city searching for someone who knew "truth". I don't recall whether or not he ever found the person he was looking for; but, I do remember thinking it was a good thing to do.
There are primarily two questions I'd like to discuss concerning truth:
1. Is there such a thing as "absolute" truth or is everything relative?
2. If there is a real truth, can one "know" it?
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines truth to be: (1) the state of being the case: FACT; (2) the body of real things, events, and facts: ACTUALITY; (3) the property of being in accord with fact or reality: TRUE. When you think about it, there are quite a few words in our vocabulary that have to do with the idea of TRUTH. In addition to those just mentioned there are also: reality, certainty, veracity, lies, untruths, etc. That there are words defining this concept and its opposite (i.e., lies) indicates that there are some who do believe TRUTH to be an understandable (i.e., knowable) concept.
Today however, there are many who think it's relative as to what an individual believes. As if, ones mind (where beliefs are held) is the controlling factor. I'll bring up "relativism" on another day. Just let me ask you a couple of questions....
If I believe hard-enough that the grass is purple... can that belief actually change the color of the grass? Could my belief negate the effects of chlorophyll (the green photosynthetic coloring matter of plants)? Because it's a trivial question in that there are no consequences of believing the grass to be purple, you might say that it's purple if I want it to be.
What if the question were instead... If I believe hard-enough that I could fly... I climb to the top of the Empire State Building to live my faith... can my belief really make me able to fly? What if I took someone else (a child perhaps) with me... what would you say then? Probably (and rightly ;-) that I was crazy.... perhaps I'd be locked up before I could hurt someone else. Why?
Because the TRUTH of the matter is that my belief had nothing to do with whether or not I could fly and in TRUTH I can not fly.
Next time, I'll discuss whether or not we can "know" truth... I'd love to hear your comments (proper English please) on this.