Month: May 2021

One Size Does Not Fit All in the Complexity of Life

            One size does not fit all in the instinctual lifestyle habits in the natural living world. 

            There are no 3-step or 5-step plans that functionally apply to the lifestyle habits of lions, cheetahs, and leopards in the same cat family…much less to elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffes, and wildebeest on the African savanna plains.

            Cheetahs instinctively know not to chase zebras, which they can easily run after and catch, because zebras are too large in size for a single cheetah to wrestle to the ground.  Lions do not bother to hunt Thompson’s gazelles because lions cannot run fast enough to catch them.  Lions instinctively know that their larger sized body-plans and strength rather than running speed…are not suited to chasing after the swift-footed Thompson’s gazelle. 

            When we consider the ten-million living species on the earth, the diversity of the biological and ecological systems are so complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated that a one size fits all approach to survival is instead brilliantly divided into unique architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits that reveal a creative imagination for innovative thinking that is truly mind-boggling.

            We also see this same high quality of creative imagination for innovative thinking in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

            Because the complexity of the biological and ecological systems in the natural living world support the diversity of life-forms we see on our planet earth, this has a similar parallel to the reality of the events and circumstances of this current fallen world that is likewise too complex for simplistic, one size fits all solutions.

            The life-script for Abraham is different from the life-script for Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Hannah, Samuel, David, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary, Peter, James, Paul, and of course for Jesus Christ the Son of God.

            Joseph cannot live Abraham’s life.  David’s calling is not to deliver the Israelites from Egypt and to part the Red Sea.  No one else can perform the unique role of John the Baptist.  Only one person…Mary…can be the mother of Jesus Christ.  Only the blemish-free and morally perfect Jesus Christ can be the Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sin, walking within a singularly unique life-script divinely composed before the foundation of the earth (Rev. 13:8).   

            There are two important lessons we can draw from this comparison of the diversity we see in the natural living world and the diversity we see in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

            First, the redemptive salvation in the Bible comes by grace through faith and not through a program of self-performed good works…the faith of Abraham actualized in his life-script four hundred years before the introduction of the Law of Moses (Gal. 3:17-18).

            By having a diversity of life-scripts for journeys of faith, not only does the God of the Bible match our unique talents and abilities to very specific callings and mission-plans, but uniquely diverse life-scripts for believers excludes our tendency to co-op a simplistic 3-point or 5-point plan and apply it to our lives using the humanistic self-reliance of self-sovereignty.

            Salvation by grace through faith enables the diversity of uniquely composed journey of faith life-scripts that engender a personal relationship with God (Jer. 31:31-34) that is not attainable through the individual autonomy of self-sovereignty sitting atop the thrones of our lives.

            Second, salvation by grace through faith sets-up the unimaginably counterintuitive reality whereby we can enter into a research program into the discovery of the knowledge of good and evil…inhabiting the 4-wheel drive vehicle of a fallen moral nature (2 Cor. 4:7)…redeemed and sanctified through the cross and resurrection of Christ to be able to traverse over the rough terrain of this equally fallen world.

            The brilliance of this scheme of salvation is the recognition that an understanding of the broad array of moral concepts contained within the knowledge of good and evil can only be achieved through the microscopic and telescopic lens of a fallen yet redeemed nature, possessing the humility of repentance in order to be open and teachable, but also coming at the massive complexity of the knowledge of good and evil while occupying the “earthen vessel” of a fallen nature to be able to comprehend the subtle nuances of the issues involved.

            Human life in reality is every bit as complex as the biological and ecological systems in the natural living world, and therefore required a diversity of life-scripts for human beings in the same way that lions need their own unique instinctual approach to survival and reproduction that is entirely different from the instinctual lifestyle approach for their related cousins the cheetah and leopard, and even more diverse from that of elephants, hippopotamus, and giraffes.

            The modern recognition of the correlation between the two innovative realities of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the ten-million species in the living world, with the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of God-composed journey of faith life-scripts patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith, and experienced by Christians today…lifts these two realities above a causal explanation coming from the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism.

            The complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated God-composed journey of faith life-scripts that precisely match the talents and abilities of individually diverse people…is a concept that could not be the product of human literary invented mythology.

            The vast diversity we see in both the natural living world and the events and circumstances of human life, reveals a universe of reality that is at the opposite end of the spectrum-line from one size fits all.

            In my opinion, this reality requires a mature explanation for its origin that far exceeds the hopelessly simplistic explanation that matter/energy alone can produce the organized complexity we see in the natural world and in human life.

            Only intelligent agency could produce the broad diversity of the architectural body-plans and instinctual lifestyle habits in the natural living world, and only an intelligent agent God could compose life-scripts for human beings that enable them to investigate first-hand the nuances of the knowledge of good and evil…made possible by the redemptive salvation of grace by faith that enables me to enter into the risk of an adventure of faith following the leading of Jesus Christ…without jeopardizing my salvation through my own imperfect performance along the way.

            One size does not fit all in the natural living world, and one size does not fit all in the biblical narrative stories of faith from Enoch through Paul.  This argues for the same creative God active in both these spheres of reality.

One Purpose of Redemptive Salvation

            God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, not because He did not want them to have the knowledge of good and evil…but profoundly at the deepest level of brilliant foresight and perfect divine love…God knew that eating a piece of fruit from a special tree could not possibly impart the depth of a genuine knowledge of good and evil.

            A timeless and eternal God in Revelation 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, meaning that God anticipated the fall of man and the need for redemptive salvation by grace through faith…rather than self-salvation through a program of reformation by self-performance of good works…far ahead of time.

            Eating the fruit only gave Adam and Eve the recognition and awareness that they were naked. 

            It did not add virtue to their characters.

            The temptation in the Garden of Eden by Satan in the beguiling spiritualized apparition of a beautiful talking serpent was in the form of two subtly destructive lies that are at the low, corrupt bottom of the vertical spectrum-line of goodness and light.

            The first subtle lie was that eating this fruit would make Adam and Eve “as gods knowing good and evil,” which is a classic half-truth lacking the fine-print details. 

            Knowing we are morally imperfect (naked) by itself is only one leg of the three-legged stool required as a minimum to be “as gods”…missing the other two legs of divinely timeless foresight and perfect moral goodness.

            The second subtle lie was that this temptation contained the character assassination of God, questioning the motivation, reliability, and trustworthiness of God’s word.

            We do not understand redemptive salvation rightly.

            Yes, the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ eternally redeem believers from our sins by grace through faith.

            This is as orthodox as can be…central to the Christian gospel message.

            But there is an even higher underlying principle that we talk around the edges of but do not fully understand, the power of which is not only overwhelming in revealing the brilliance of the God of the Bible…but also may answer the single fundamental question of this life and why we are here.

            Every Spirit-born Christian understands the basics that Jesus took upon Himself our sins so that the Father can view us through Christ…in our still fallen yet redeemed nature…so that we can experience a relationship with God purchased for us through the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            This is the simplicity of the Christian gospel message that can and does launch the new life of faith free from the bondage to sin.

            But in my opinion there are two important connecting dots that have been missing until now.

            The first dot is the recognition that the people of faith in the Bible and modern Christians today…pursue our callings through the vehicle of a fallen nature…the “earthen vessel” described by Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:7).

            This is the God redeemed and sanctioned 4-wheel drive vehicle that transports us over the rough terrain of this life in the one-and-only research program that opens up our understanding of the knowledge of good and evil…enabled by grace through faith and not self-performed good works.

            The second missing dot until now is the recent discovery in the past few decades by modern science of complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated systems of information everywhere we look in the natural world.

            This second dot points towards an intelligent designer God having unimaginably precise architectural and engineering acumen…which then carries over into the biblical narrative stories of faith revealing a composer of life-scripts having equally purposeful direction and creatively brilliant insight.

            These two dots further connect our understanding of the temptation in the Garden of Eden…with the cross and the resurrection…a through-line constructed of pure love and brilliant light, entirely for our benefit in a narrow way that could never have been the product of human literary mythological fiction.

            The difficulties of life are not comeuppance for our rebellion and fall in the Garden of Eden, universally applied to the human race.

            The challenges in this life, the things that continue to knock us down and have the appearance of fighting against our obtaining the “good life of ease” (Gen. 16:2, 43:14; Est. 4:16; Mt. 16:22) are not payback for our shortcomings.

            This is truly and simply the only way we could through empirical first-hand experience obtain a workable knowledge of good and evil…to be able to comprehend the subtle nuances of the broad array of moral concepts using the microscopic and telescopic lens of the humility of an “earthen vessel” to venture out into a research program in this likewise fallen and broken world.

            How is Paul going to be able from Damascus onward to research the real truth that becomes his New Testament letters to the early churches…without being buffeted along the road of a research program that by the divine intention of God has many pitfalls, obstacles, and pot-holes along the way?

            The divine love and brilliant pure light of God uniquely manages to combine the redemptive salvation of grace by faith with God-composed journey of faith life-scripts after the pattern of the biblical narrative stories of faith…so that we can not only experience a personal relationship with God…but also so that we can in the most counterintuitive and divinely created way pursue a real understanding of good and evil that was inaccessible through the rebellious route of going our own way by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

The Sin Which Doth So Easily Beset Us

            “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Cor. 4:7).

            Nothing on this earth can defeat virtue, integrity, courage, and selflessness.

            The humility of fallen imperfect natures combined with the love of God living inside the believer is the essence of redemptive salvation that conquers the world.

            Peter and John testifying before the Sanhedrin Council (Acts 4:8-12) exhibits this…virtue, integrity, courage, and selflessness while still inhabiting imperfect fallen natures.

            Exploring the knowledge of good and evil through the God-sanctioned vehicle of our fallen nature, makes redemptive salvation and a journey of faith following Christ within reach of everyone.   

            To enter into redemptive, salvation God does not ask us to run an obstacle course, to “jump through hoops,” to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to some holy place, or to embark on a program of self-reformation.

            When we become Spirit-born Christians, God instantly flips our fallen, imperfect moral nature into this 4-wheel drive vehicle to investigate the knowledge of good and evil in this equally fallen and broken world, when we allow God to displace our ways with His higher ways…when we pick up our cross to follow Jesus.

            God then inserts a God-composed journey of faith life-script into our lives as the precise individualized route for our good and for the benefit of others…after the pattern of the biblical narrative stories of faith.

            When I became a Christian at age 18, I was not instantly transformed into a perfect moral being, capable of living my life flawlessly from that point forward.

            The people of faith in the Bible universally carry-out their unique callings and mission-plans while still inhabiting their imperfect fallen natures.

            There is no disagreement in our culture that Christians and nonbelievers are all human…are non-divine, flawed beings.

            But few people (none that I have ever heard) ask the basic question why do not Christians become divinely perfect after conversion, having the Holy Spirit now also living inside them.

            The Bible says that on Judgment Day the lost will weep and lament, partly because there is no going back for a second chance, but also I believe because on that day everyone will realize clearly what little actual difference there was between the destructive sin that separated people from God for the coming eternity…and this same sin, our imperfect fallen nature…that the God of the Bible through the redemptive salvation by grace through faith is and was able to flip into the perfectly designed vehicle wherein believers can enter into divinely sanctioned research programs to discover and understand the subtle nuances of the knowledge of good and evil.

            This occurs through the narrow gate (Mt. 7:13-14) of faith and trust in redemptive salvation…again by grace through faith in Christ…that makes this possible not through self-salvation by our performance of good works (Tit. 3:5; Eph. 2:8-9) but by the entirely counterintuitive method of pursuing this research program while occupying the humility of an “earthen vessel.”

            The microscopic and telescopic lens needed to comprehend the broad array of moral concepts in the knowledge of good and evil, and the rare capacity to be able to evaluate the qualifications of Jesus Christ to be the blemish-free, Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin…this is the very thing in the great debate in human history that is so closely separated between the thin line of belief and unbelief…that divides forever eternal salvation from eternal damnation, the difference between one small step putting one leg forward in faith across this line…giving God the benefit-of-the-doubt that through redemptive salvation He can flip our imperfect nature into the positive of the one and only way we could discover and comprehend the knowledge of good and evil through first-hand empirical experience.

            Paul’s dual-purpose calling of spreading the gospel message and researching the truth that would compose his letters to the New Testament churches…occurred while he occupied his fallen nature (Rom. 7:15-8:4).

            The realization of the reality of how close salvation was in reach all the time on this earth…to the lost on Judgment Day…will be a large part of the unimaginable regret for those people pushing the God of the Bible out of their lives today.

            But the one tentative and courageous small step over the line that separates skeptical and indifferent unbelief…into redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ, inaugurates the God-intended potential for this adventure of faith to separate into the condition of being lost in our sins (Jn. 8:24) through unbelief, or into a redeemed fallen nature now capable of comprehending the knowledge of good and evil…into a gulf as wide apart as the Grand Canyon.

            This reality could only be creatively invented through the brilliance of the mind of God, and could never be the product of human literary imaginative mythology.

            To take the very thing that separates us from fellowship with a perfect God…and craft it into a positive that is the one and only way in which we could understand the issues at stake…through a redemptive salvation that only He could provide by bearing the penalty for sin Himself through the cross and resurrection…is a spiritual engineering feat that could only come from the same God who created this universe.

The Suffering of Paul was not Payback…Part 1

            The statement of Jesus to Ananias in a vision in Damascus that Jesus would show Saul/Paul the suffering that would be a part of the ministry that Paul was being called into to take the gospel message to the Jews and Gentiles in the larger Greco-Roman world…was upfront knowledge for Paul’s sake of what to anticipate in this challenging calling, and not a tit-for-tat payback for the persecution Saul/Paul had waged against the early Christian church (Acts 9:15-16).

            Jesus Christ is the blemish-free and sinless Passover Lamb of God yet suffers the cross for the benefit of others…leading the way into a new and higher reality we humans could never envision or initiate in our lives. 

            This is the true calling and discipleship for all believers…to experience first-hand some measure of the divine love of God expressed through us in benefit to others…to actualize through a God-composed journey of faith life-script the greater love of laying down our lives for our friends (Jn. 15:13).

            The upcoming suffering that Jesus revealed to Paul at the time of his conversion involved the logical mechanics of how to obtain a real and genuine knowledge of good and evil, which Saul/Paul mistakenly thought he possessed when he persecuted the early Christian church, and was not the justice of payback for the harm Paul had caused.

            All of the resistance, pushback, adversity, and suffering that Paul experienced in the coming days of his evangelical outreach ministry to the Greco-Roman world…is simply and truly the reality of the research program investigating the knowledge of good and evil that would inform the inspiration for writing the New Testament letters to the early Christian churches that have helped countless Christians down to our current time.

            Saul/Paul thought he was doing God service by persecuting the aberrant Christian church, and God took this upward into a higher place through a God-composed adventure of faith life-script that eventually produced the divinely inspired truth of Paul’s New Testament letters to the churches, and the loving relationships revealed in Romans 16.

            In this regard, we do not understand sin rightly.

            2 Corinthians 4:7 reads: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (Bold and italics mine).

            Our imperfect fallen nature is the 4-wheel drive research vehicle divinely enlisted and sanctioned to take us into the real-world exploration of the knowledge of good and evil in an imperfect fallen world. 

            The God of the Bible is so brilliant He can take our fallen sinful nature and instantly flip it into a positive…that no human literary genius could imagine and no counterfeit program of self-salvation through the performance of good works could contemplate.

            Paul’s divinely orchestrated ministry occurs while he is still in his fallen condition (Rom. 7:15-25).  Paul’s frame-of-reference for the challenging journey of faith that can produce the inspiration and wisdom of his New Testament letters to the churches…is not through the vantage point of self-righteous moral perfection achieved through self-realization or supernaturally instilled by God at conversion, but instead through the humble lens of a redeemed fallen nature.

            This is unimaginable creativity…except through the insightful mind of the God of the Bible.

            When I became a Spirit-born Christian at age 18, I was not instantly transformed into a perfect moral person.

            My sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross past, present, and future, intentionally so that I can enter into a risk-filled adventure of faith confidently knowing upfront that my eternal salvation is not threatened or jeopardized by the certainty that my own performance will at times fall far short of perfection.

            All of the positive characters of faith in the Bible likewise proceeded through their individual callings and mission-plans while still inhabiting human natures that are imperfect.

            God was not surprised by the fall in the Garden of Eden, forcing Him unexpectedly into a reactive countermove, in response to Adam and Eve uncritically accepting the word of Satan in the spiritualized form of a beguiling talking serpent…taking and eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God told them not to eat (Rev. 13:8).

            The timeless God of the Bible had the plan of redemptive salvation in place upfront to supply the real way into obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, that could never have been achieved with any depth or staying power through merely eating a piece of fruit.

            Our imperfect nature is the precise vehicle needed to comprehend the subtle nuances of the broad array of moral concepts in play within the knowledge of good and evil…fully expressed in action in this broken world.

            If we hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt. 5:6) by way of the assistance of the Holy Spirit as new creations in Christ (Gal. 2:20), then Roman 8:1-4 becomes operative in our lives:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Rom. 8:1).

            Our fallen nature redeemed through the cross of Christ (Jn. 3:14-15) by grace through faith, enables believers to enter into a God-composed journey of faith life-script designed specifically for us after the pattern in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

            This sophisticated research program matching our created capacity to understand the nuances of good and evil through empirical first-hand experience…is on the same high level that we can understand the technical depths of the phenomena in the natural world through analytical scientific investigation.

            The one caveat here is that a research program into the knowledge of good and evil through the lens of a redeemed fallen nature, must have the mind-set and heart attitude that our adventure of faith must be Christ-led and not self-orchestrated…as expressed in the following verses from the Bible:

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”  (Jn. 8:36).

“For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love to serve one another.” (Gal. 5:13). 

“As free, and not using you liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God.” 1 Pet. 2:16).

“If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set you affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:1-3).

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10).

            We cannot learn about good and evil any other way.  We need the vehicle of a redeemed fallen nature, as the only possible route, to be able to comprehend and assimilate the knowledge of good and evil…that will last for our benefit for an eternity in the timeless environment of heaven…and bring some measure of “peace, and good will toward men” (Lk. 2:14) through the living-out of God-composed journey of faith life-scripts here and now on earth.  

Why Did a Perfect Creator Produce an Imperfect Creation?

            In the six-disc DVD collection of Yes, Your Question…A Collection of the Best Questions From Top Universities, produced by RZIM in 2012, a person from the audience in the DVD disk recorded at Columbia University…asks Ravi Zacharias the following question:

“If God is all powerful, and all knowing, why would He still choose to create a world where it’s going to fall apart, where we are going to have atrocities now…when He knows that is going to be the outcome of what we choose?”

            Paraphrasing…Dr. Zacharias gives the standard apologetic response to this question, saying that when we deal with the effect, when we deal with what we have now in the world, regardless of the initial cause, we basically have four options for the possible worlds God could have created.

            The first option is best rephrased as a question: “Would it have been better to have no creation at all, than to have this one?”

            The second option is also best rephrased as a question: “Would it have been better to create people who would only choose the good?”

            The third option in the form of a question for a possible world is: “Would it have been better if God created a world where there was no such thing as good or evil…an amoral world?”

            The fourth option is this world…where there is a possibility of good and evil…knowing that we would still choose evil, with all of the negative outcomes this entails, being the only other option as far as we know.

            Ravi Zacharias goes on to say that when this question is raised, it metaphysically introduces a moral framework in the form of: “Would it have been better?”

            He elaborates by saying that if it would have been morally better to choose one of these other options…the only reason behind the question is that it must first assume there is such a thing as good or evil…otherwise what is the point of the question?

            He concludes his answer by saying that we cannot invoke a moral question in an amoral world, and the ultimate ethic in a moral world is love…which none of the other three worlds would have made possible.

            In this essay I would like to posit a fifth hypothetical option, of the possibility of God creating billions of junior gods in lieu of human beings, also created in the image of God…but having the added features of possessing divine timeless foresight and absolute goodness.

            This fifth option would alleviate the sticky problem of evil and suffering in this world, but introduces some new realities that make this option from a practical standpoint implausible and untenable, bringing us back to the original answer to the question of why God chose to create this world…that this present world having free-will choice is the only reality wherein the ultimate ethic of love can actualize

            Assuming that it is possible for God to create multiple junior gods possessing timeless foresight and absolute goodness…one obvious difficulty here is the fundamental question of: what is time.

            The creation of the fourth dimension time, at the Big Bang beginning of the universe, is an extraordinary invention that we take for granted.  We have clocks, wristwatches, and mobile phones that tell us what time it is, and we have our lives scheduled around business meetings and luncheon dates…but we have no idea what time is.

            Centuries after Isaac Newton, we can use his equations regarding motion and gravity to put men on the moon…but even today we have no idea what gravity is.

            Physics, chemistry, and mathematics are rife with equations describing heat, motion, acceleration, friction, momentum, and energy…but we have no idea what energy actually is.

            The notion that God could create beings like Himself who possess divine timeless foresight…bipedal, human-like junior gods walking the earth today…who would have no previous idea about the basic design and production issues involved in the creation of time in our universe, then going about their lives using timeless foresight but not knowing what time actually is…being created persons but not being creators themselves of fundamental things like time, gravity, and energy, of not having the Creator’s database of insider information and knowledge to take them the rest of the way to complete and total divinity…might turn-out to be a half-way exercise in futility.

            This might be asking too much of God…to create beings having partial divinity…but not giving them “the whole enchilada.”

            One interesting observation in this new Age of Information, is that the Intelligent Designer God did not merely use a pre-existing database of information in crafting the universe, in the same way that an architect or a structural engineer would utilize the received wisdom of an existing database of information for the design of a new building. 

            In the case of the Big Bang creation of the concrete physical universe at a moment of time about 13.7 billion years ago, out of nothing that was previously material, out of the mind of God who is a Spirit Being…the interesting realization here is that the very information used in creating the universe was invented “from scratch” for this one singular purpose.

            This would be like an architect or an engineer inventing 4×8-inch wood posts, structural steel columns, glass windows, granite countertops, and wood casing trim…from scratch…with all of the accompanying chemistry, physics, and mathematics, at the start of the design of a new house, office building, or shopping mall.

            The idea that God could create numerous, full-feature junior-gods possessing the ability to invent information from scratch exactly like He can…may not be possible…or even advisable.

            Likewise, with the attribute of absolute goodness…the first question here is what exactly is: “goodness.”

            In the essay “Where Does Good and Evil Come From”…I try to explain good and evil in terms of a vertical spectrum-line of light…making the case that evil is an absence of good, like varying shades of darkness are defined by the absence of light.

            But here also the fundamental question still stands: “What exactly is goodness?”

            Like gravity, energy, time, and light…we can describe goodness…but we have no real idea what it actually is.

            Creating billions of junior gods would involve the input of things that are certainly abstract, spiritual, and non-material, but would have essences inherent in absolute goodness and divine timeless foresight, substances that might not be fully or even partially transferable from one living being…God…to another living being.

            It appears within the four dimensions of this world, at least for us, that goodness and foresight are realities that are obtained experientially, through the course of the events and circumstances of our lives…entities that are again intangibly abstract and spiritually non-material…purchased by fallible human beings within the context of the fourth option of possible worlds mentioned above, containing good and evil, and providing the opportunity for experiencing love.

            But even with a multitude of individual junior gods…having absolute goodness, divine timeless foresight, and all-power…someone would still have to assume the role of leader…someone would still have to be in-charge.

            Imagine for a moment a nuclear submarine…with all of its officers and crew members having the equal rank of admiral.  The cooks in the ship’s galley would all be admirals…along with the captain, the navigator, the engineers, the gunnery mates, and the other officers.

            But the chief cook in the galley cannot do two jobs at the same time…to cook meals for the crew, and to serve as captain of the submarine.  One person has to assume the role of captain…no matter if the captain and everyone else on board the submarine also have the equal rank of admiral.  If each and every sailor aboard the submarine possesses absolute goodness, divine timeless foresight, and a perfect knowledge of submarine navigation and warfare…each sailor would still have to perform their precisely distinctive function aboard the ship…to the exclusion of other duties performed by their shipmates.

            The hypothetically shared rank and title of admiral becomes superfluous…washes-out as being unimportant, in this reality of the various duties of manning a nuclear submarine.

            Imagine a professional football team in the NFL, in which every player on the field and sitting on the bench, along with all of the assistant coaches and support staff, all have the equivalent rank and title of Head Coach.

            Even if every person on this football team had the divine capacity of a god, possessing divine timeless foresight, absolute goodness, and a perfect knowledge of football regarding every position on the field, and all of the possible plays to call for every imaginable situation…there would still have to be only one person making the play-calling decisions…making play-calling decisions in-the-moment by mass-committee being too cumbersome and time-consuming.

            This is one reason why the rebellion of Satan is even more ill-advised for us humans.  Whatever good attributes Satan once had and enjoyed as the “covering cherub” in heaven (Ezek. 28:11-19)…the idea that his beauty and charm justified his ambition to usurp the leadership position of God, epitomizes the error of the self-sovereignty of going our own way apart from God (Isa. 53:5-6).

            An eternal heavens…where everyone is a divine god…is difficult to imagine even with the universally shared attributes of absolute goodness and divine timeless foresight, without one key person still being the leader, without one key person still being in-charge.

            But much more important…on the most fundamental level…is that a world and a heavens in which everyone is a perfect divine being, has the potential for creating the bizarre environment of absolute autonomous individualism, where everyone could and would go their own separate ways, being equally qualified to do so, eliminating the capacity for engaging in personal relationships at the depth of intimacy that could create genuine love.

            Someone might ask the insightful question here, that if the Godhead Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoy absolute goodness, divine timeless foresight, and perfect love, why could this not telescope out to billions of junior gods created in the image of God…possessing the nearly complete attributes of God?

            Wouldn’t people be more lovable if they were perfect?

            Or does being morally perfect and possessing divine timeless foresight, but not possessing the complete package of the totality of the attributes of God…like the ability to create a universe and a planet earth, like the ability of God to create life…does this simply make partially divine beings who are better equipped to drift apart into autonomous individualism more perfectly…doing their “own thing” apart from God?

            Theoretically, without hitting this nail with a hammer too many times, if the God of the Bible could create numerous equivalent junior gods having the complete package of divine attributes, in possession of the vast database of information and the ability to create life, their own universe, and the laws of physics to match this universe…then we really would be looking at the possibility of the many worlds, “multi-verse” scenario.

            But what would be the point of having an endless series of equivalent universes and planet earths like ours…all managed by enumerable junior gods equivalent to the God of the Bible…all being omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and possessing divine timeless foresight and absolute moral goodness, producing a reality of gods all being in the same selfless giving mode of divine love?

            Where then would the varied realities of faith, trust, friendship, fidelity, and love be?  What would be the variation of context for the broad array of moral concepts to actualize?

            One or more of these perfect junior gods might say that a time had come in their created universe to produce non-divine human beings having free-will and the advanced capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning…yet then introducing the possibility of the entrance of good and evil, and the further introduction of the disruptive appearance of a liar and a con-man…a corrupted being…able to bring corruption into an otherwise perfect past existence.

            This would merely create an endless repetition of the present condition we are now in.

            Is the true reality…in however many number of universes we might theoretically imagine…that good and evil are eternal, stand-alone, and self-existent realities, timelessly inescapable entities that fall on the vertical spectrum-line of light and darkness, of good and evil?   

            Borrowing from a statement made in another essay in this book…that it is pointless to enter into a debate with a liar…if God would have confronted and challenged Satan the rebel and usurper during the temptation in the Garden of Eden, God’s word alone would have had no more weight behind it than that of Satan, disguised in the spiritualized form of a beautiful talking serpent having the feature of beguiling speech.

            This is one partial explanation for why God created this physical, material universe, and why the Second Person of the Trinity…Jesus Christ the Son of God…was incarnated into a human body (Isa. 7:14; Lk. 2:8-14; Jn. 1:14).

            The real truth is that God does input absolute goodness and divine timeless foresight into human beings, by giving us some of Himself in the form of the indwelling Holy Spirit, through the process of spiritual rebirth…of salvation by faith through grace (Jn. 3:5, 16-17).

            But because the knowledge of good and evil cannot be purchased on the cheap by merely eating a piece of fruit hanging from the branch of a very special tree…the same free-will choice now flushed-out within the physical material environment of this world, provides the opportunity for God to input some of Himself into human beings.

            This also fleshes-out the rebellion element of the deceptive temptation put forward by Satan in the Garden of Eden, questioning God’s credibility through the hollow use of unsubstantiated words alone, of God’s qualifications to be the captain of the nuclear submarine or the Head Coach of the football team…to be the divine King and Ruler of the eternal realm of heaven, while imparting to us the free-will choice to accept the input of some of His divine nature and essence, through faith in Jesus Christ.

            This unique world we inhabit offers the potential for experiencing love, but also the potential for experiencing suffering as the outcome of evil…as the only possible option to expose Satan as a liar and a rebel…and at the same time set-up a fair and reasonable way in this broken world context to voluntarily want the input of absolute goodness and timeless foresight that God is offering to us, obtained by the faith through grace of free-will choice (Num. 21:8-9; Jn. 3:14-15; Eph. 2:8-10).

            Finally, if the God of the Bible is everywhere (omnipresent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent)…and possesses divine timeless foresight and absolute moral goodness…then the idea that He would need to set-up a police state having an intricate spy network, is superfluous and nonsensical.

            There would also be no point in creating robots programmed to always do the right thing, because God is already in a position to be an affectively dominating tyrant and autocratic ruler…if this was His choice…being everywhere, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

            John Lennox gives a great answer in his debates with atheists who object to the idea of a “Big Brother” God always looking over our shoulder…that in his home he has someone always looking after him 24/7 with caring love…his wife.

            For a God who possesses perfect virtue, justice, and divinely selfless love at the peak and pinnacle of brilliant pure light and absolute goodness, the only thing that He needs to work with is the faith and trust of His created beings…if He is going to have meaningful relationships with them.

            This is like the old adage: “What do you get…as a gift…for the person who has everything?”

            Creating junior gods as perfect in every way as He is…may be an impossibility for God…like creating square circles, married bachelors, or one-ended sticks.

            God does not want to be a policeman constantly looking over the shoulder of everyone all the time…although being everywhere, knowing everything, and being all-powerful…He does.

            God wants people who will freely choose virtue, who can be self-governing in the liberty of wanting to do the right things, who are open to the reception of His love and fellowship, the gift of Himself…of a perfect God living in the giving mode.

            This is the redemption and deliverance from sin that Jesus purchased for us on the cross and through His resurrection on Easter morning.

            This also might be a reasonable answer to why the Second Person of the Trinity…Jesus Christ the Son of God…was incarnated into a human body and now inhabits a new resurrected body in heaven, contained within a bodily form that we can see, listen to, and speak with, which is not the case with God the Father still in His original Spirit form, along with the Holy Spirit, being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent…but unseen.  

“That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.  That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.  May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”   (Eph. 3:16-19)

Visual Proof does not Naturally Translate into a Biblical-Quality Journey of Faith

“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.”                                                                                        (1 Cor. 2:7)

            If Jesus a few days after the resurrection walked down the middle of Main Street and right into the Temple in Jerusalem, then like doubting Thomas, all of the common people along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes could examine His wounds and observe His resurrected new body, and accept as proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Son of God.

            But accepting the visual evidence, producing absolute knowledge like two plus two equals four or the existence of the noonday sun, in accepting the empirical evidence that Jesus is the divine Son of God…this proof is a type of passive acknowledgement that is not the same thing as active faith that will produce a willingness to follow Him. 

            This is like people saying to the recognized king of the realm: “We know that you are the rightful king, but we will not follow you into battle against a formidable adversary because we do not think you are a qualified military leader.”

            The Pharisees and scribes would have looked at the resurrected Jesus, talked with Him, examined His healed wounds and then said: “Great…good for you…nothing has changed in our minds as a result of this newest miracle of yours.  We still choose not to follow you.  We refuse to enter in at the ‘narrow gate’ (Mt. 7:13-14) you mentioned in your Sermon on the Mount.  We will continue to do religion the way we have set it up, to mix old traditions with going our own way to suit ourselves” (Isa. 53:6). 

            Absolute knowledge by visual, empirical observation does not address the basic problem.  It does not displace, remove, or shift the mindset of self-sovereignty, of autonomous individualism over into the God-sovereignty category of a biblical-quality walk of faith. 

            Jesus walking into the Temple in Jerusalem after His resurrection, offering absolute proof of His divinity in physically rising from the dead surprisingly does not change by force of reason alone…the inner man…and does not equate to everyone freely choosing to make Him Lord and Master of our lives.

            After the resurrection revealing Himself to the Pharisees and scribes would not have produced biblical faith, defined as willingly allowing God to displace our ways with His higher ways.

            This is as ancient in Jewish history as the calling of Abraham to leave Haran and to go by faith to Canaan (Heb. 11:8-10), as basic to Judaism as it gets and fundamental to the Christian concept of picking up our cross to follow Jesus.

            Visual, empirical observation of the resurrected Jesus by the religious elites and the general populace in Jerusalem a few days after Easter morning does not translate into Hebrews 11:1 faith to surrender all, to abandon self-sovereignty.

            To follow Jesus Christ into an adventure of faith to match the examples of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, Hannah, David, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah…to name a few from the Old Testament, sets forth the examples of the lives of faith which should have been commonplace, should have been the norm for Jewish living at the time of the ministry of Jesus in first-century Israel.

            Like our free-will choice to love someone, our choosing to follow God, by purposeful, intentional, divinely creative design will always be a free-will, take-it-or-leave-it, open option of the heart and mind in first-century Jerusalem, in the present-day, and for all eternity in heaven. 

            This is the remarkably sublime beauty of the free-will, free-thinking, moral reasoning, risky from God’s standpoint, non-robots that God created humans to be, operating with or without absolute, visual, empirically foolproof evidence of God’s existence (Jn. 20:29).

            The spiritual mystery of the self-autonomous rebellion of pushing God aside and out of our lives is therefore one of the key moral issues under examination in this life and this broken world.

            A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand that God initially takes people having hidden potential yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13).  Through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns people into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.

            This is one of the main themes of the Bible.  Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies.  Others will push God away and follow their own course.

            This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking, by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith, of God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts, and its persistent longevity over thousands of years. 

            Naturalistic materialism if true should produce one homogeneous human mindset, either self-sovereignty or God-sovereignty…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the natural living world.

            This option of belief or unbelief should tell us that as human beings we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).

            The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible, above, beyond, and outside of humanistic literary invention.

            This is the easier half in answering the question of why Jesus did not walk down Main Street and into the Temple a few days after His resurrection, which would have changed the dynamics of a journey of faith following Jesus Christ instead into the type of absolute, visual, foolproof evidence that atheists and skeptics demand…but which falls short as the means to establish a personal relationship.

            The hard part in analyzing the wisdom behind the delicate balance between belief and unbelief in this current world environment is as follows:

            After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead…John 11:45-48 reads:

45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

48 If we let him alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

            The religious elites in Jerusalem decided to continue worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…self-autonomous self-rulership…by sacrificing Jesus Christ…by removing Him out of the way.

            This is expressed in John 11:49-50:

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all.

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

            Caiaphas said this in order to perpetuate the status quo, to continue worldly conventional normalcy and thinking as it existed at that time and place.  Caiaphas was not interested in the initiating or the maintaining of biblical-quality journeys of faith, which the early church would soon step into and demonstrate to the world shortly (Acts 8:4) ”turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

            Killing Jesus through Roman crucifixion, falsely as a political and religious malefactor simply foretells what would happen if this same attitude of self-sovereignty at its worst extreme version of worldly self-interest as demonstrated that day at the cross on Calvary Hill…was imported into heaven for all eternity.

            One reason why God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden was to prevent their access to the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22-24).

            An eternity of disruptive, self-centered rebellion in heaven is and would be unacceptable.

            This brings us to one of the key questions regarding the real Christian life…of why it is faith and not visual, empirical evidence that is the driving force in Christian discipleship, of why faith is the central element in the God-composed journey of faith life-scripts from Abraham in Genesis all the way through the Bible to Paul in Acts.

            Truth by definition is exclusive.  Multiple competing “truths” cannot all be true at the same time.

            In a sea of lies, deceptions, and cleverly disguised half-truths, the biblical narrative stories of faith inject a narrative of truth into the marketplace of secular worldviews.

            Skeptical unbelief tells people to go their own way as autonomous individuals…to sit atop the thrones of their lives as junior gods…to create their own definition and standards of purpose and meaning in their lives, to operate entirely independent of the input of the God of the Bible

            When there are multiple competing narratives which are difficult to parse and evaluate, then giving someone or some program the benefit-of-the-doubt may be the only reliable way to differentiate truth from error and right from wrong.

            Giving someone or some idea the benefit-of-the-doubt comes into play as the only way to test whether a particular narrative is true or false, and if experientially proven over the course of time to be true by the process of elimination, this then excludes the other multiple competing narratives.

            Thus the entrance into the human history of the marketplace of ideas the uniquely innovative calling of Abraham into a God-composed journey of faith life-script, that displaces whatever normative life Abraham might have otherwise lived in the city of Haran with an entirely new life-script that Abraham could not have dreamed-up in his wildest imagination.

            This new journey of faith in the narrative storyline of Abraham inaugurates the concept of listening in the Spirit to hear the voice of God, and then following the leading of God into life-scripts that produce positive results on a grand scale unprecedented in all of human history.

            The first introduction of a false competing narrative is recorded in Genesis chapter three in the temptation of Adam and Eve, a competing narrative of such deep sophistication that it functionally continues down to this present day:

“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:4-5).

            This is the fundamental, competing false narrative that says that human beings are capable of going our own way apart from God.

            Another competing false narrative prominent today is the alluring appeal of the coveting of materialistic possessions found at the bottom half of the American Dream, that forms a false standard for measuring self-validation and self-worth as determined through worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.

            There is a historically pivotal narrative in first-century Jerusalem in the third year of the ministry of Jesus Christ in which it appears that the competing narrative guiding the religious elites in Jerusalem is stronger than the narrative of following Jesus Christ.

            As discussed in an earlier essay, as Jesus is mocked and taunted by those standing around watching Him die on the cross…it would appear that the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes have won…and Jesus and His followers have lost.

            But the true narrative unfolds three days later when Jesus is resurrected from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea to fulfill His unique destiny to be the Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sin…”slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13:8).

            Jesus walking openly down Main Street and into the Temple merely creates a new competing narrative based upon an empirical observation of the risen Jesus as Messiah.

            But this would for many people do nothing to inaugurate the true God-initiated narrative of a God-composed journey of faith life-script in which our ways are displaced by God’s higher ways and thoughts, an imperative necessity in human lives for first-century Jews living in Jerusalem and for Gentiles at that time scattered throughout Asia Minor, and for people today as previewed for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

            For the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes in the Temple interrogating the risen Jesus a few days after the resurrection…the newly revealed, factual knowledge that Jesus rose bodily from the dead would merely be in the minds of the people who are proud, arrogant, self-confident, and self-led simply another tool to add to their tool-kit of self-righteous good works.

            Within the false narrative they choose of self-sovereign self-in-control…the visual evidence of the risen Jesus openly walking down Main Street and into the Temple does not lead to following God in a journey of faith (Mic. 6:8).

            In the Sermon on the Mount…Jesus identifies the one true narrative for right living that excludes all other competing narratives:

“Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because narrow is the gate, and hard is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”                                     (Mt. 7:13-14)

            In Mark 8:34-37…Jesus clarifies further the one true narrative for right living, again which excludes all other competing narratives based upon worldly conventional normalcy and thinking:

“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

            The exclusivity of truth is uncompromisingly and unapologetically stated by Jesus Christ when He says in John 14:6…”I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

            Jesus says to Martha before He raises her brother Lazarus from a rock covered tomb after being dead four days: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.  And whosover liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (Jn. 11:25-26).

            This is the epitome of a worldview narrative that excludes all other competing narratives.

            G. K. Chesterton observed that Christianity has not been “tried and found wanting” but “found difficult and never tried.”[1]

            To actualize God’s true narrative into human life requires a God-composed journey of faith life-script that displaces our ways with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9).  This requires repentance and a turning away from the narrative of going our own way (Isa. 53:5-6), requires a reformation in our worldview narrative (Mt. 4:17) that the visual proof of Jesus walking down Main Street and into the Temple after His resurrection will not produce.

[1] Patrick Glynn, GOD, The Evidence (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997, 1999), p. 149.

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