Humans are fascinating. Oftentimes their complexities can be overwhelming and as a result most people tend not to think too much about them….I guess most people just don’t think. *kicks a tv* Regardless, humans have some very interesting characteristics which can explain why they tend to act the way they do. Humans have both a spiritual side and a physical side. Their spiritual side includes the will, the mind, and the soul/spirit which are NOT the same thing. Their physical side includes the flesh (body) and the passions (hunger, need for sleep, and need for love….) We also have a heart which is somehow both.  I don’t understand it yet. (Jeremiah 17:9)

Understanding all these parts of the person is very interesting but explaining them all would be quite tedious. I’ll get to the point and for anyone who actually reads this and has questions we can have a good conversation about what all the human components are. What is most important to understand is that the spiritual is more powerful then the physical. The physical is tied to decay, it is irrevocably cursed by God because of sin, this will not change until the second coming of Christ. Romans 8:20-23 An animal can not help being bound, to the physical world, it can not help being a victim of its passions and environment. So a dog that kills its owner because of harsh treatment should be pitied and loved because it was raised poorly and had no choice in the matter. A human because he has a spiritual side which can overpower the physical passions must be held accountable for his actions, he can never blame his circumstances nor environment. When humans blame other things for being responsible for their actions they lower themselves to the level of animals and degrades themselves and the human race.

As Christians a large part of our lives is to be spent eradicating sin. By sin I mean the distance between ourselves and God. God is everywhere. This is true, but until you know He’s there you He might as well not be there because its not going to help you at all if you don’t know He’s there. God is not physical being He is spiritual so I’m not talking about simply physical distance. There is spiritual distance between ourselves and God which must be traversed for us to truly rest in Him. As pagans we had no hope of traversing the gap, it was quite impossible. Christ’s sacrifice guaranteed the souls of those who believe an eternity in heaven and his blood made a road which we can travel on which will lead us to God. The road has many names, Godliness, Righteousness, Love, Perfection, Goodness.

To draw near to God we must bring all our components. If we wish to eradicate sin and to rest in the peace of God all of our faculties must be equally in pursuit of God. Often Christians make the mistake of cutting out the fruit of sin without ever taking out the root. A person who truly wants to walk the road of Godliness can not continually be stomping out all the outgrowths of sin saying, “I’m going to honor my parents, I’m going to respect my girls, I’m going to get good grades, I’m going to stop cursing, I’m going to stop drinking….” This will wear a person down, make them discouraged and they won’t experience the peace Christ did. The problem is that this person is just dealing the results of his sin, he’s just trying to fix what happens because he’s so far away from God. What He has to do is start asking the deeper questions of, “why do I dishonor my parents, why do I drink, why do I get bad grades?”

The problem usually resides in the spiritual side of a person. It is the more powerful side of a person and most people don’t even know its there or if they do they rarely access it. Its hard to change all of a sudden from being a sensual person who learns with one’s eyes and thinks with one’s feelings. But it must be understood that change comes by changing the heart not by changing the action. It is possible to stop drinking but the inner problem that forced that person to alcohol in the first place will soon enough find another avenue to vent its anger. A true disciple of Christ will discipline all parts of his person, not just the part doing the sinning. A person who wishes to destroy sin in his life by the power of God must allow God to control His mind for the mind creates one’s thoughts; his body because it is the throne of the passions; his will determines his actions; his soul because the soul decides one nature; the spirit because the spirit is one’s character and his emotions because they decide his feelings. A diligent disciple then would create a lifestyle in which each of his parts is properly disciplined. Christians are rarely taught today that their is more to them then what they can feel. They are not taught that the unseen determine what happens in the seen world and that disciplining their spirit is far more important then learning about the dangers of drugs and the rules of dating. *kicks the tv again*

Comment away, let me know what you think on the text or the music, I've started listening to Nightwish again, I haven't really listened to them since Junior High.

Perhaps the most relevant task for any human is to know God to the greatest extent that their circumstances allow. Mind, I don't mean you ought to know all the theological proofs for God's existence, although those are very useful, whats far more important and more practical is the knowing of God Himself. Knowing Him like you would know a person.

I've been struck recently with how much I know about God compared to how little I actually know Him.  Ravi Zacharias say's "the best way to know God exists is to actually meet with Him every morning and interact with the Living God." No amount of logical proof is more beneficial then a real life experience with the Divine. Don't believe me, well then meet with Him every morning, you'll find out soon enough the glory of a relationship with the Almighty. :) The more I've thought about it, the more I believe that you really can't do anything sensible without God. The fields of science, mathematics, philosophy, ethics and theology to rest upon God existence. If God didn't exist then all those fields of study are based on illogical assumptions.

I want to publicly praise God for blessing me this past week and helping me get to know Him a bit better. You may laugh after your done reading and say, "well, Caleb, you were just lucky" that is fine because I may just have gotten lucky. Wednesday was my day to take my driving test to get my license. I was nervous, I had already failed once, I didn't want to fail again and I was more upset at having already failed then I can ever remember being. I prayed to God that morning for two things, first that He would orchestrate it so that the parking lot which I'd have to park in would be relatively empty. This He did and so backing up wasn't nearly as nerve racking as it could have been. Second I prayed and asked for a nice test instructor. God allowed this also, I got a shortish plumpish baldish man named Hosea, who despite his name was not Mexican and was not munching on a tacco. An extra bonus was that God allowed it to rain, not only do I love the rain but I also drive better in the rain and the dark so I felt more comfortable during the test.

So, making a short story, even shorter, I passed with no x's on my sheet. I set a record at the DMV, "the place were happiness goes to die" and within one hour of getting there I had waited through three lines, passed my test and with license in hand was walking out the door. In my experience God tends to act just on the edge of the rational. It is certainly possible that God could have just made a license materialize in my wallet one day but I think He prefers to work through His creation, He likes to see us take pleasure in doing His will and braving scary things for His glory. So my story doesn't prove anything, I'm not saying God will always answer your prayer in the affirmative and help you pass your driving test nor am I saying that God never does totally impossible, irrational things just because He can. The moral of the story is to get in touch with God, not on just an intellectual level but on a spiritual level. Once we are willing to do that it seems God is very willing to bless us and help us in our times of trouble. 

Obeservations from a week without power.

The past two weeks have been fascinating. Eight days and one hour without heat, water, electricity and internet forces one to make adjustments to one's lfiestyle. I learned alot from being so long without power, here's a  list.

I. Experiation dates on food are relative
II. Its possible to cook frozen fish sticks over a candle
III. Melted ice cream does not refreeze
IV. One gallon of snow melts into only a quarter that amount of water.
V. It is possible to stay clean using only handsanatizer and toothpaste
VI. Reading by candlelight is much cooler then artifiial light.
VII. Scarves are super cool and warm.
VIII. Transformers are filled with toxic ooze
IX. Dropping said transformer on brother is unadvized
X. Stealing transformers can result in one month in prison or a fifteen thosuand dollar fine. If they catch you :).
XI. The average Simsburian doesn't trust unwashed, unshaved teenagers walking the streets with axes and chainsaws looking for work.

I would have put pictures with this but I am writing at school because we still don't have internet at the house.

The Way of Humanity

All history is mans attempt to save himself from discomfort. If this be true then salvation for most of humanity means total comfort or mindless bliss. Throughout history their have been four primary methods humans have used to attain this salvation. 

I. Religion (god exists and we should try to find bliss in the supernatural)

Supporters: Judiams, Christianity, Islam, paganism  

II. Humanism (salvation comes through creating the "superman" who will conquer poverty, war, disease through technology and education)

Supporters: Platonism, Fascism, Communism, Utopianism  

III. Naturalism (Bliss can be found in conforming to nature, to work with and benefit that which is growing around you)

Supporters: Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Naturalism. 

IV. Nihilism  (salvation is nothing, humanity is nothing, nothing is nothing and killing my girlfriend is no different then bringing her flower…or at least you can’t prove that its not.  

Supporters: Existentialism, Postmodernism

     Western history has progressed through these phases with minor exceptions and set backs in the following order, Religion > Humanism > Naturalism > Nihilism. I view this progression as one of decline. Humanity sought to find happiness in various supernatural deities but the gods were found to demanding and unsatisfactory, so we declined to seeking salvation in ourselves. When we tried to find happiness in jumanity it proved futile. Not only couldn’t we make ourselves happy but we also couldn’t even understand why we were unhappy in the first place. Once you remove the supernatural from a worldview it is utterly impossible to give any sort of rational answer for were we came from and why we are the way we are. Hence the widespread skepticism of today. Nature could not satisfy our lust for pleasure either…it was too cruel...to unfeeling for us so we gave it up. Now, we know that we know nothing and gain a sick sense of satisfaction from knowing that we know nothing.. School teaches us that when nothing is everything, then anything is relative and the best way live is by the social norms. In the common tongue this means, “be as happy as you can by hurting as few people as you can.”

     This is where we are today, or at least where much of the world is today. It’s mindset which represents the grounds at the bottom of the coffee cup or the crust of a piece of pizza  and I cringe thinking about where humanity might digress to from here. We have  a self destructive mentality because it has ceased to believe that anything ought to be achieved or changed. The results of living a worldview like this will bring about a life much like the life of a star. Stars emit energy through nuclear fusion. They convert their own innards into energy which emits itself in light and heat. Stars bust when they have nothing left to fuse and they collapse because they have literally eaten themselves from the inside out.  A worldview that is totally self focused seeks salvation from itself and once the person has exhausted all their resources they either give up or explode. Usually this explosion really hurts everyone, not just the person exploding. Is this not where we live? Haven’t most of us suffered or been hurt by some person who has lived this way, found it impossible and exploded leaving scars, broken relationships and hurt feelings?

 

     So what is the answer? It is not in fixing the worldview; it rests in fixing the desire. Throughout history man has tried every conceivable invention to get comfort but all have failed. The problem is not in the method the problem is in the purpose. Humanity is lost and the world is spiraling into chaos because comfort is not what we were meant to pursue. Man was lost from the start and to find true anything we must go back to the Beginning. It is in the council chambers of God where creation was planned in which we find true meaning. We don’t find happiness or comfort by pursuing happiness as humanity has done throughout all of history. We find true comfort when we pursue God and only a life spent in complete slavery to Him can we ever find rest. 

 

I’ve digressed significantly from my original point. Essentially this post is meant to say that all of history has been mans attempt at happiness. Our desire for happiness has taken society as a whole further and further away from God. The common ideas of toleration, and relative truth popular today represent the furthest mainstream philosophical  step away from God history has yet seen. Comment with disagreements because this is mostly conjecture based on my understanding of history.

Nobility

I apologize very much for not blogging recently. I'm working on some posts, one about Predestination and another about the value system of a Christian, both are sitting half written on my desk upstairs and they need only an afternoon of solid work to be completed. Because I don't want to feel so guilty for not posting and because I don't want all my readers to leave, I will post just to give you something to think about. Hopefully this will produce more then simply an, "oh that's cute" which too often occurs in this bleak society. Have fun with this one. :)


True worth is in being, not seeming,—
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,

There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.

'Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing's so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.


Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world, ,early and late.
No jot of our courage abating
Our part is to work and to wait
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth.
For he who is honest is noble
Whatever his fortunes or birth.

Flirting

"Flirting is a cheap way to make a friendship. It makes you feel closer to a person faster but the relationship is not as deep as a real friendship built upon shared experience and good conversation. So its a faster way to make friends and a quicker way to lose them. It has its purpose but its purpose is not making friends"

This is my niece and she's about the coolest niece I've ever had.

     The point of this post is not to make some sort of moral judgment on the actions which most people associate with flirting. Things such as touching, teasing and other forms of non intentional, pleasure based interaction are not what troubles me. All those things have their place and so can be used either in that place and so be “right” or out of place and so be “wrong. The actions themselves are just actions and to judge them would be impossible. I leave those decisions to God and the person to work out between themselves. What I would like to do is look past those physical actions and see inside the heart problem that leads to flirting and then further to more undesirable ends. So lets begin at the beginning, a logical place to start.  

     God desire or what God pleases is always good. Morality is subject to God’s desires and so morality, right and wrong, good and evil are as changeable as the desires of God.. Goodness is always what God likes and evil is always what God dislikes. Mathematically this means. Goodness = God’s pleasure. Evil = That which angers God

     Another fact is that we are made in God’s image that means we have many of the same traits of God. One of the most powerful traits which we have from that image is to want what pleases us. God wants what pleases Him but He is wise enough to know what is helpful to Himself and what isn’t. We have inherited this desire to please ourselves but we haven’t inherited the wisdom which is necessary to satisfy it. This is why God tells us to trust Him, so that He can orchestrate what is best for us, which is the same as what pleases Him which as the same as good. That may be hard to follow, but basically I’m saying  that humans have a natural desire to do what is best for themselves, this desire we inherited from the image of God BUT because of the fall we have forgotten that what is best for ourselves is actually to do what God says. This is the reason we have such a great disturbance in the world. We have billions of people trying to satisfy this healthy desire but they are lacking the necessary wisdom and humility which tells us to submit to God.

     With billions of people not satisfying their primary desire it is natural to assume that problematic confusion and conflict would arise. The confusion and conflict leads to people being lost, they lose track of themselves, their purpose, their origin and their destiny. Without the fundamental questions of life being answered people wander lost in a world full of danger. Now people have a desire to do what is best for themselves but without knowing who they, why they are here, or where they are going they have lost all ability to know what is actually best for them. Imagine a runner in a race who doesn’t know the start line or the end line. Imagine that then add to it the fact that the runner thinks he’s a swimmer. This person will surely not win the race. This is exactly the state of most people today and even many Christians who “know” the answers but never realized their significance are in the same quandary. So then the majority of people are merely seeking what is most pleasing to themselves. This is because we have a desire which tells us to seek what’s best for us and we inhabit a culture and a society that tells us that what is best for us is what is pleasing to us the majority of people are merely seeking what is pleasing to themselves. Hopefully you understand a bit more about current human nature. With this understanding we can now understand flirting.

 

     To flirt means to take something serious and play with it. In human relationships it means to make light of a relationship basically to play with a person.  Flirting is simply a word which people associate with certain actions, playful actions. These actions are either meant as seductive or loving depending on your motive. This is why I can not say what most people call flirting is right or wrong. Most people can’t tell the different between a friend who uses flirting to cheer someone up out of love and a person who merely wants attention or someone to touch them and uses flirting as a seductive tool. It is not right to judge action rather we must judge motive. The motives for flirting are rarely something someone else can figure out from the outside, its something internal. It’s a question of whether you would be able to look God in the eye and say I did what I did out of love for you.  

     So the point is not to say “flirting is wrong” but it‘s to understand why people flirt. If you flirt because you are the sort of person I described earlier, one who does not know himself and just wants purpose and meaning then not merely flirting but everything you are doing is wrong and damaging to yourself, as well as those around you. If you are a Christian, who knows your identity in Christ and knows himself well enough to know how to love others by loving Christ then you can flirt, just as long as it is helping the person you are doing it with.  

All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

    Application:  Let us evaluate ourselves and seek God’s mercy. Most people are so caught up in the habit of flirting or of playing with serious things that they don’t even realize what they are doing or why they do it. This is another problem which comes from not knowing ourselves and from not practicing intentional self evaluation. Comments are much appreciated. I’m new to a world where flirting is common and most of what I write is based on thinking not experience.

Thoughts From Spending a Night on the Trampoline

What if God doesn't care about YOU? *gasp* What if He loves the world but He only loves you to the degree that you incorporate yourself into His plan for the universe at large? A scary notion it is true but one I think you would be hard put to prove wrong. I've been thinking alot about God recently, making my way along that endless ray of beauty, attempting to insure that the God I place my trust in is actually the God which exists and is not a god I created for myself to suit my fancy and my worldview. It is this journey which makes me ask questions like I posed at the beginning.

So during my meditations of God I've realized something. This something is simply phrased not so simply applied. It is this:

That forgiveness of God is not so hard to get but unless you have Godliness being forgiven isn’t worth much. We often talk about the gospel and about God's grace but only in respect to their forgiving power; never in respect to their ability to change the very nature of who we are and how we act. I have never heard a preacher say, "accept the gospel so that you can stop hating your parents and stop being peer pressured and stop displeasing the God who creates Hurricanes." What we here is "accept the gospel so that you can be forgiven for hating your parents, for being peer pressured and for displeasing God."

The problem is not in one statement being false is that in separating them and only talking about one side of the gospel we remove the supports and our theology begins to crumble when applied to real life. If the only purpose for the Jesus coming to earth is to forgive us of our sins then I have no need to do anything else but sit passively and be forgiven. When the "impregnable" forces of selfish desire, passion and pride assail my soul why should I not let them carry me along in a rush of good feeling? I have no reason to resist and even if I wanted to resist I couldn't because all I've ever been taught is that the blood of Christ forgives me of sins. Herein lies the problem and herein is a primary reason for our weakness as churches, families and individuals. We don’t understand that godliness which is the being the character of God is so very essential. For some silly reason we think the only think important in life is to be happy. For secular people we see this in all the selfish means people use to acquire self worth and happiness. Christians, are also focused on being happy so they talk about being forgiven. They say, “we have to suffer through this life, obeying all sorts of rules but it will be ok because when we die we are going to heaven” Christians wonder why people call them hypocrites.

Well I was telling God all this yesterday. Basically God said, "yeah you can do that if you want, I will forgive you when you come back to me BUT if you continue to live in sin I will not help you as you walk through life. If you(Caleb) believe that you can do your life better on your own, then you run it as you like and the blood of my son will wash away your sins on judgment day." The point is that we have a backwards view of life in general. If we can step back for a moment and step out of a worldview which tells us, “the purpose of your existence is your own happiness” and see that what our purpose ought to be is, “to see the kingdom of God fulfilled” then we will be able to make sense out of Jesus’ which before made no sense.

I look at history, watch the news, observe the modern theories of worldly philosophers and feel like I’m eating raw tofu wrapped in slugs. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to here a well respected, doctors and professors proclaiming evolution which at its core means, that one drop of my own fat must be dearer to me then the accumulated lives of tens of thousands of my fellow primates.

Life without God is just not worth living. If you don't live for God you have to ignore things to be happy or be depressed because their is absolutely nothing you can do about the child who dies every two minutes because of starvation or about the millions of people around the world who live their lives in slums, garbage dumps and communes without any hope of being freed from their unofficial slavery. So maybe it is easy to be forgiven of our sins. Perhaps its true that we can get away with an awful lot without anyone ever finding out but doesn’t it all seem like such a waste when you compare the greatest life ever lived by any non Christian, compare that life to the idea of spending a life in service to a God who can point his finger and send constellations into the sky. Would we rather serve ourselves assuming everything we did went right or would it be better for us to sacrifice our lives and serve a God of power and might, who makes the earth shake and the mountains tremble, waters the earth and grants the stars their light.

Mumblings

Humans seem to have this tendency to blame things on others. Please correct me, if this is an illegitimate statement but I don’t find many people who are willing to admit that they are faulty I hardly know if I could myself. Indeed if pressed myself I would know I’m faulty, who wouldn’t? But I would never be able to honestly admit the depths of my pride without a self righteous contempt of all “those others” who won’t admit to being as bad as me. It’s really a pitiful state to be in, knowing you’re awful but being unable to admit the thing because admitting it would only bring you lower. Oh dear, I’ll return to my mumblings…*thinks*.... Now many people are very willing to admit that they fail and they are willing to admit their faults but they aren’t willing to talk about how they themselves are to blame. Examples that prove this are numerous. A child steals a cookie gets caught and will admit that he took the cookie but offers the excuse that he was hungry or that his mom “said” he could have one. A teen murders his peer and admits to doing it but blames his anger or even his peer’s actions. An adult cheats on his taxes and may admit he cheated but blames the government and says the taxes are too high.

Encase you didn't guess this already the pictures have nothing whatsoever to do with what I write.

In each circumstance the person at fault admitted their fault but never admitted that they were to blame, they never admitted a fault with them just something wrong which they did. For most people a cheating parent is not a cheat himself he is just a parent who cheats. A child who steals is not a thief only a stealing child and a murdering teen is not a murderer simply a victim of his emotions and upbringing. That is really it…we like to be victims and it has become totally engrained into our nature. Not engrained rather it has been born into us. Can you imagine a kid upon being reprimanded for stealing a cookie saying, “yes I am a thief, I’m sorry for being a thief” No! that would sounds crazy to our ears, what we hear is, “I’m sorry I took the cookie” or, “I’m sorry you caught me, I won’t let it happen again” We have become accustomed to making excuses and pointing blame at everyone except for ourselves. This tendency of course goes back to our sin nature, to the Fall and it remains the norm today because of humanities unwillingness to control this great cosmos, so the rule of it has fallen to more base creatures, the devil and his minions.


Here now is another problem, not only do we humans want to be victims but to stay victims and have that victimized feeling of self pity which we all know and love we must relinquish our lordship over this world which God granted to humanity and pass it over to The Prince of This World, who waits eagerly to accept it. This sacrificing of our freedom is the price we all pay, when we don’t take responsibility for our actions, when we blame what we do, feel, think and say on anything other then our own self; we give up control of ourselves to whatever it is we are blaming. The teen who blames anger for his actions is actually admitting to being under the dominion of anger. Whenever we allow ourselves to act outside the bounds of God’s will we have submitted to what is unchristian and admitted for all to see that we care more for that thing then we do for God. Isn’t that terrible? Every time I allow myself to fall into laziness I am admitting that I care more for my comfort then God. Will comfort last? Will the results of idle past time and vain hobbies last one minute under the fires of God’s judgment? I hardly know where I am heading with this post; it is indeed mumblings which I hope some reader wiser then I can glean some moral or lesson from and be kind enough to post it in a comment. Best of luck to you wiser person wherever you may be. As for the rest of us lets not be victims, rather lets take up with courage and confidence whatever position of command God has given us. May we govern and govern well that sphere of this world which God created “very good” and which man has allowed to slip into the chaos which we see it dominated by today.

Simplicity

I am a staunch supporter of the idea that life is simpler then we make it out to be. I believe that if common sense were a bit more common we'd have a far superior race of people today. There is this tendency for humanity to take the easiest road to get places. Now sometimes this is good because it has made people invent many useful and convenient tools to satisfy their innate laziness. However its negative side is far more harmful. Our desire to do things the easy way, keeps us from doing the right thing because the right thing is often harder. Leonard Ravenhill rightly says, "you don't have to do anything to displease God, there is only one way to heaven there are a million ways to Hell" If we just continue living our lives, coasting along then we'll never come to a proper relationship with God. We are unwilling to do the simple thing because it seems harder and we make things much more complicated then they have to be in order to justify not acting properly.



Lets take the example of Jesus. He never wrote a book and he had no higher education but at the age of twelve he was debating with the most intellectual men of his day. I do not believe that Jesus had any sort of supernatural wisdom booster pack we humans do not also have access to. That means that whatever Jesus was at twelve we also could and probably should be. We must ask then, how did this boy of twelve with minimal education become so intelligent? The answer, is...simple ;). The important things in life are generally the simplest. It is our pride, our arrogance and all the other garbage that we pick up as we grow up which makes discoursing about the serious things of life so difficult and so complicated. Throughout history it was rarely a problem for people to believe that god created the world. The simplest explanation to something existing is that something created it but in today schools we are willing to except unnecessarily complicated formulas that make no sense. Why? because to acknowledge the sensible, simple, explanation for the universe existing would mean that we are created beings, responsible to a higher power. This is something which no freedom loving individual will admit.

This question of creation is the crux of one's worldview and from it springs the answers to all other questions. For someone who is unwilling to accept the idea that we are indeed created their worldview only gets increasingly complex as they try to explain away good and evil, the problem of destiny, people's guilt, the deterioration of the earth and of course spiritual phenomenons or miracles. Exactly the opposite for someone who submits to the simple explanation that fits into reality. Answer to all those problems rather then becoming increasingly complex become simpler and the answers fit neatly into a well ordered worldview.



So Jesus was able to talk and discuss eloquently about the intellectual topics of his day, not because he had some divinely enhanced mind and not because he had studied for years in the best schools of his era rather he had spent his life in love to those around him. In observing the world and inviting God to interact in everything He did. Because He was willing to accept the simplest solutions that did not contradict reality. This to ought to be our goal, not that we should dispense with all formal education but we must not allow ourselves to think that our most important learning takes place in the classroom. Learning about the nature of God, the nature of ourselves, the nature of people, the nature of the universe and all other important questions will rarely be answered in a lecture hall but the answers come from humble observation of God, people, ourselves and the universe in which we live.

Love

What is Love?

Is it This?.......Perhaps not

Rather I would say...

Love is not a thing but it is an idea.

Love is not any specific action but it is a condition or a state of being

Love is selfless

Love is the ability of one’s mind (thoughts), emotions, (feelings) and will (choice) to do all things in the best interest of the object of one’s love.

Love is very complex and has many faces. At its very heart love is selflessness. Love is not limited to any specific actions or thoughts but no loving thought or action would put me first. Love must look out for the better interest of the object loved not the lover. That being said I think there is a practical level of love and an ideal level of love.

Ideal love is when love has totally enraptured a person making their entire being loving. Ideal love is when a persons thoughts, feelings, actions have all been trained and disciplined to look out for the beloveds best interests instinctively. In ideal love there is no longer a conflict between loving someone or not, we will simply love them as Jesus did.

Practical love is what most people have, it is when someone is still divided between love and other things. Love may be in control of their desire so they may always want to help other people but their mind is still thinking only of themselves. Or perhaps they think they ought to help other people but they still hate the person and so they can not love them. Herein lies the complexity of love and all the different types of love. There are infinite possibilities for where love can be and how powerful its presence is in a person. And it becomes even more complicated when we have conflicting loves which is why loving God is the only thing worth doing because in loving God we will grow more like Him and in growing like Him we will automatically act in the best interest of all who we interact with. Our desires then shouldn’t be too love everyone rather it should be to love God if we can do that then loving others will be easy.

So that is love, an idea which can in its simplest form means to be looking out for the best interest of the beloved. It is neither tangible nor limited to any simple set of feelings thoughts or actions. It must be planted in us, nurtured and allowed to grow until it encompasses our being. It is not something we posses instinctively and it is not something which will just come about from being in the proper circumstances at the right time. It is hard and with all good things must be actively chosen until it becomes habitual.

Some of the things I've done today.

I thought you might find interesting some of my actives so far today. My daily sentence this morning was to dig up all the rocks surrounding this pipe, carry them halfway across the yard and spread them. I was tired afterwards.

So I decided to vent my frustration on a stump. Partly because stumps can't fight back and partly because this particular stump pokes its annoying head out the middle of our lawn and gets in the way of the mower. You would be wondering now, how uprooting a stump is a good cure for frustation, normally such a task is really hard work and not something someone does for pleasure. I went about it a different way. This way......I built a fire over the stump and burned its roots off. Sitting by the fire, waiting for it to burn down I had another idea. While in Vermont this past weekend I ran across some free books.. Some scientists have tired to prove that reading in and of itself is educational and helpful to the development of children. I strongly disagree and show my disagreement by burning books which do not deserve to be books. Jordan and I decided that before burning the books we ought to dishonor them.

Then we fed them to the flames.

No Gossip girl we do not love you.

Let all such vileness be purged from the land so that the land may flourish and produce great harvests.

Thoughts on "Love Wins"

I apologize for this post because it is not well planned and will probably be more critical then I want it to sound. I recently read Rob Bell's new book called Love Wins and the following are my thoughts after reading it.




I think Rob Bell failed greatly in his theology, in his understanding of God, love, heaven and @#!*% . He has tried and failed to poke holes in an essential doctrine which has been generally accepted as orthodox since the days of Gregory the Great.
Their are four primary points of the book.
First, Rob attempts to show that love wins.
"Love is what God is, love is why Jesus came and love is why he continues to come year after year to persons after persons. Love is why I've written this book,. and love is what I want to leave you with. May you experience this vast, expansive, infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about. And may you know deep in your bones that love wins.

Second, that God's primary purpose is to see that all of his creation comes into a perfect relationship with Him and so live a life of joy, hope, mercy, peace and happiness.
This is not specifically stated because its humanism and Rob would lose his audience if he actually said it but its assumed throughout the book.

Third, he attempts to show that @#!*% as a physical location of eternal torment does not exist.
" @#!*% is what we create ourselves when we reject God, it is not a literal place where we go after we die."

Fourth, he tries to show that heaven is not somewhere else but is here on earth inside of us by the power and grace of Jesus Christ.
"So how do I answer questions about heaven? How would I summarize all that Jesus teaches? There's heaven now somewhere else. There's heaven here sometime else. And then there's Jesus invitation to heaven here and now in this moment in this place."

Those four things are the main points of his book.

As far as showing that love wins Rob does not define love. I looked for a definition of love in his book and these are the closest things I could find:

"its right to point out that love by it's very nature is freedom. For there to be love there has to be the option both now and then to not love." and he says later "God is love, And love is a relationship. This relationship is one of joy and it can't be contained."

Both these definitions are faulty, unbiblical and unhelpful. For if you are in love you are hardly free to simply not love the object of your love. It is also untrue that love is necessarily a relationship. I can love a girl who has no knowledge of my love and so their would be no relationship. I did not find anywhere else in the book a definition of love.


Second point is just as easily refuted. This is Rob's logic.
God most important desire is to see all men saved
If all men are not saved God is a failure
God is not a failure
Therefore all men must somehow be saved
The fallacy is in the first premise. Rob never proves that the purpose of God's existence is to see all men saved. God has other plans and purposes of his own beyond the salvation of every human. Even if Rob is right and God exists simply for the benefit of his creation (humanism and heresy) he never is willing to say this outright because he knows nobody would believe him.

The third and fourth points can be handled together. They both touch on the same issue of what happens after we die. The book closes with these lines and I think they summarize Rob's views of heaven and @#!*% .

"The only thing left to do is trust. Everybody is already at the party. Heaven and @#!*% , Here, Now, Around us, Upon us, Within us."


Rob says that the world is one big "party" we can have either heaven or @#!*% based on how we choose to live our life and whether we will accept Jesus. By having heaven he means those who accept God's grace and live in his commandments will experience God's fullness and be the kind loving merciful people we all want to be. The same is true for @#!*% according to Rob Bell. We can have @#!*% here because @#!*% is simply the absence of God so those who refuse to live by God's rules are already living in @#!*% .

The problems with this idea are many. First, Rob never says what happens after a human dies. A reader of his book would have to assume that when we die we somehow come back to earth again in some form of Christianized reincarnation but Rob can never say this because their is no basis for it in either church tradition or the Bible. Second if @#!*% is just something that exists within ourselves then somehow someone must explain away all the passages in which biblical authors talk about @#!*% . Third Most of The Revelation along with the many smaller passages throughout the Bible which talk about Jesus returning amidst destruction and plagues to purge the world by fire and sword must be explained away. Fourth. All of the Christians who spent their lives waiting for the day of glory when Christ would return and all sin would be destroyed and Christ would begin the heavenly reign which would include Peter and Paul had a false belief about heaven.

So those are the four points that I thought Rob had to say in his new book. I did not agree with any of them and was sad that a man with such wisdom could sink to such a low level of intellectualism. The book is riddled with either or fallacies such as this one, ""is history tragic?
Have billions of people been created only to spend eternity in conscious punishment and torment, suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth?
Is our future uncertain? Or will God take care of us?" or this one, "Are we safe? Are we secure? Or are we on our own?" The idea being that God is either a tyrant who hates us all and created us to send us to torment or he is a loving God who could not bear to see his creation suffer. Their is of course a third option but the fallacy tries to hide it. Their is also lots of assumptive language and taking the bible out of context.

I have not written this post because I do not like Rob Bell. I've written it because the ideas presented in Love Wins have much deeper consequences then what would appear on the surface. Anytime someone tries to poke holes in a 2000 year old belief you ought to be very very careful and the person doing the question has a responsibility to take a clear stance, define his terms, list his evidence and to analyze all of the results which would happen if someone took the new belief to heart. Rob Bell does not do this and so even if his ideas were correct I still wouldn't trust him because he does not prove them. If you are reading this and in the back of your mind happily saying, "yes, I knew Rob was wrong", well you should still read the book. The questions he raises are very important and everyone should be able to have answers at their finger tips because just believing something that is right is not helpful unless you know why you are right.

So if you haven't read the book, read it, learn from it and learn to defend what is right true.

That is all, Happy 4th of July.