Tag: Faith

Is and Ought

            In an interview on the Internet, John Lennox says that he disagrees with almost everything David Hume wrote, except where Hume stated that we cannot easily go from an “is” to an “ought”[1] in our understanding of reality.

            There is a logical gap, a discontinuity between an “is” and an “ought.”

            For example, it is easy to say as a factual statistic that a professional baseball player on our local team “is” in the hitting slump of having only one base-hit for the last twenty at-bats, but it is something else entirely to say how this same player “ought” to get out of this hitting slump.

            Anytime anyone discussing anything, describes the factual “is” of a particular subject, then unnoticeably shifts over into the “ought” of that same subject, they have thereby introduced an entirely different discussion.

            The status quo of a factually established “is” in-the- moment is worlds apart from the ideal “ought” of how something might become better now or in the future.

            In science, what something “is” can be defined in terms of descriptions such as its physical size, length, speed, location, color, or mass. 

What something “is” can also be described by its action, such as the force of gravity, the speed of light, the beneficial characteristics of carbon to enable numerous chemical bonds to form into compounds, or the expansion rate of the universe.

            Going back in history, the how and the why of the “ought” of purposeful, targeted outcomes being removed from research into the workings of the natural world, early in the modern Scientific Revolution is given by Michael J. Behe from his 2019 book Darwin Devolves:

“How did science—the very discipline we use to understand the physical world—get to the bizarre point where some otherwise very smart people use it to deny the existence of mind?  Arguably it started innocently enough.  At the urging of the philosopher Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare, four centuries ago science made a critical decision.  It would abandon the old idea of “final causes”—that is, the notion of the purpose of an object—which it had inherited from Aristotle.  Whether the true role of, say, a waterfall or a forest is to exhibit the glory of God, supply beauty to the world, or something else couldn’t be decided by an investigation of nature alone.  Henceforth science would leave all such questions to philosophy and theology, restricting itself to investigating just the mechanics of nature.  What a cow or mountain or star is “for” would trouble science no longer.”[2]    

            It is easy to see here, that by removing the underlying purpose contained within the “ought” of an object…a waterfall, forest, cow, or mountain…in order to simplify the new scientific method going forward in the late 1500’s to the early 1600’s to more easily identify the factual “is” of a particular phenomenon, carries the danger to morph this purposeless research methodology over time into the exceedingly damaging cultural worldview of a similarly purpose-free, ought-less human life.

The Life-Script of Paul

            Here lies one of the most important topics in this book, and possibly one of the most fundamental issues in all of eternity.

            The educated Pharisee Saul/Paul “is” persecuting the early Christian church of Jewish believers in Jesus Christ as being the long-awaited Messiah.

            This situation of an “is” emphatically does not naturally create a path leading to the transformational “ought” of Saul/Paul becoming the preeminent Christian evangelical missionary to the first-century Greco-Roman world.

            Nothing in worldly conventional normalcy and thinking can explain getting us from the “is” to the “ought” in the historical life of the apostle Paul.

            But the God of the Bible in an instant of time can brilliantly flip Saul into Paul (the Greek equivalent of the Jewish name Saul) from an “is” to an “ought,” creating in a moment a well-educated Jewish scholar going out into the larger world with the Christian gospel message, having the essential super-humility needed to not look down-his-nose in condescending Jewish pride at the block-headed, polytheistic, and idol-worshipping Gentiles.

            Simply stated, Paul cannot be an effective Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world without the “is” of narrow, pride-filled Jewish tribalism radically transformed into the Great Commission “ought” of personal humility that is relatable to the lost condition of the Gentiles.

            The young Pharisee Saul/Paul had been educated in Jerusalem by the renowned teacher Gamaliel.

As Paul travels as a converted Christian missionary to evangelize in the various cities throughout Asia Minor, he is probably better educated than any of the rabbis in the local synagogues, his knowledge of the Hebrew Bible scriptures making the case for Jesus as the Christ being above reproach.

            Yet after meeting Jesus Christ as the Messiah through a blinding light on the road to Damascus, Paul realizes that of all people he should have seen Jesus of Nazareth as being the Christ, and if God can forgive him for his wrong-headed blindness as a persecutor of the followers of Jesus, then he knows that his actions are at least equal to or worse than the belief-systems of the Gentiles who were likewise ignorant of the true identity of God.

            If Jesus Christ can forgive him, then Paul knows that Jesus Christ can forgive the Gentiles as well.

            Thus, the God of the Bible can cross the wide expanse of an “is” to an “ought” in composing and orchestrating the extraordinary life mission-plan for Paul the apostle.

            The fundamental issue here having eternal import, is that Paul could never have closed the gap between the starting point “is” of being an active persecutor of the early Christian church, to the “ought” of becoming the apostle to the Gentiles and a writer of many of the New Testament letters addressed to churches throughout Asia Minor, defending the Christian faith.

            Paul could never have even imagined this radical change from an “is” to an “ought” that no human literary genius could or would invent.

This is an excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] John Lennox: Socrates in the City in Labastide, France, Parts 1 and 2 on Jan. 12 and 23, 2018 on YouTube.

[2] Michael J. Behe, Darwin Devolves (New York: Harper Collins, 2019), 258-259.

The God of the Bible Cannot Abdicate His Throne

            God cannot relinquish His position of being God like occurs with term-limits in politics.

            What better response to rebuff the challenge of an unqualified contender using character assassination through deceptive half-truths and unfounded accusations, than to create a physically material universe that no one else could create, and to compose life-scripts for human beings that illuminate the real meaning within the knowledge of good and evil, that otherwise merely eating a piece of fruit could not possibly achieve?

            Jesus is recorded in Matthew 20:27-28 as saying: “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.  Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

            In Matthew 25:31-46, an account of Judgment Day is given in which the sheep ask Jesus the King when their good-works towards other people were equivalent to doing these good deeds to Him.

            Jesus the King responds by saying: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Mt. 25:40).

            This presupposes that this large assemblage of sheep standing before the throne of God on Judgment Day acquired through their personal relationship with Jesus Christ some measure of His empathy and care for other people.

            If there is not evil and suffering in this world, how do disciples of Jesus Christ acquire the care and empathy for others that is designed to last an eternity?

            If there is not a bad Pharaoh in Egypt, how does the Passover, deliverance from Egypt, the Exodus in the wilderness, and the conquering of the land of Canaan ever occur for the Jews?

            If there is not an “evil generation” (Mt. 12:39) in power in Jerusalem during the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus, how does Jesus possibly make it all the way to the utter rejection and death on the cross?

            If Saul/Paul does not run his full course all the way to the revelation on the road to Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ that he entirely missed in the scriptures and in his contemporary society, resulting in actively persecuting the Christian church until that time, Saul/Paul cannot possibly acquire on his own the unprejudiced, enlightened tolerance needed to evangelize the Greco-Roman world.

            Finally, when the late Ravi Zacharias was asked in a radio interview where was God during 9/11, the astute answer given by Ravi Zacharias was that God was exactly where everyone wanted Him to be.

            The same can be said after the devastation following a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, exploding volcano, avalanche, mudslide, flood, tsunami, or the occurrence of a deadly virus outbreak.

            It is an absolute certainty that we all will face death at some point in time.

            The outreach of the God of the Bible is eternal salvation by grace through faith in Christ, offered freely to anyone willing to acknowledge His death and resurrection.

            Those people over human history not having access to the program of faith as articulated in the examples of journeys of faith in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, because of isolated distances in terms of geography and historical time-periods, I believe will be judged fairly and righteously according to a different standard (Acts 10:34-35).

            The reality of evil and suffering in this world does not argue for the non-existence of God or an incompetence on His part to create a world free of evil.

            The temptation in the Garden of Eden identifies the earliest example that the complexity in some portions of the broad array of moral concepts eternal in cognitive, sentient reality, need the participation of God like children need adults to beneficially warn them to look both ways before crossing the street.

This is an excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

Self-Governing Through Individual Virtue

            In Numbers 11:14, Moses complains to God: “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.”

            Nowhere in the Bible does God say that serving as King for “time without end” is too heavy.

            But Jesus Christ the sinless and blemish-free Son of God says and does all that the Second Person of the Trinity would say and do in a human body on earth…and He is crucified.

            Do we really think that God would want this same rebellion imported into heaven for all eternity?

            This complaint of Moses in Numbers 11:14 occurs at the start of the Exodus.

            When the time comes that Joshua is to lead the Israelites into the military campaign to conquer their Promised Land of Canaan, the people have been tempered by the 40-year wandering in the wilderness.

            The people are now able to exercise the self-government of voluntarily chosen virtue, so that Joshua does not have to “carry them” (Num. 11:12) as they order for battle.

            Joshua did not have to field complaints and murmurings from the people, determined themselves to do the right thing.

            There is something deeply right about giving God the benefit-of-the-doubt by releasing some aspects of self-rulership and placing some initial, beginning faith and trust in the God of the Bible…to give Him a trial period of testing to see if He is real and reliable.  

            There is something fundamentally wrong with staying stubbornly in the self-sovereignty of sitting atop the thrones of our lives as supposed junior gods, if for no other reason than that we do not have access to the final end-points of the broad array of moral concepts to perfectly inform our choices and decisions.

            The most brilliantly loving thing God could do for us is to set-up a program of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, wherein we could develop through first-hand life-events the discernment to be able to effectively govern ourselves through our voluntary choice to value and pursue virtue, being a kingdom of people God could and would gladly rule over for an eternity.

This is an excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts…Revised

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”                                               (Jn. 1:14)

            If the Bible and Christians contend that Jesus Christ is the blemish-free, Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for mankind’s sins, that He was perfect and without sin during His life and ministry on earth, by what or by whose standard do we judge the existence of this alleged perfect moral character in any person?

            How would we determine that the life of Jesus was at the outer edge of moral perfection, at the peak and the pinnacle of absolute goodness and virtue?

            How would we know that no additional room or space remained at the highest top-most point of the vertical, graduated spectrum-line of virtue and morality for further improvement?

            What would explain the existence of the diverse categories of moral criteria defining virtue, of the numerous moral concepts broken down into individual words as abstract thoughts accessible to human contemplation, that would enable and support a valid determination of the moral credentials of Jesus Christ?

            And finally, where would our highly-advanced capacity to comprehend, to divide, separate-out, and parse these varied conceptual virtues and vices, consisting of finely differentiated realities that are true-to-life, come from? 

            Where would this uniquely human capacity originate from, seeing that it does not exist anywhere else in the animal world and therefore cannot plausibly be attributed to the common descent, materialistic explanation for its origin extending seamlessly from animal instinct to human intellect?

            In short, this current planet earth is the perfect environment to conduct individual research explorations into the knowledge of good and evil, using the lens of a fallen moral nature that is redeemed by Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary.

            The broad array of moral concepts functionally operative within human relationships is the intellectually thought-filled human counterpart to the biodiversity and ecological balance we find in the natural world that enables animal instinct to operate.

            The brilliant invention of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ is the means by which believers can with impunity and without risk to our eternal salvation, enter into journeys of faith by picking-up our own cross to follow Jesus Christ into adventures of challenge beyond our imagination…designed to illuminate the subtleties of the knowledge of good and evil for our eternal benefit.

            The entirely counterintuitive insight coming from modern science that adds a new and unexpected understanding of the biblical interpretation of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, is that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was not just a way to provide forgiveness for sin and to restore our relationship with God, but also to open-up a living way into exploring the knowledge of good and evil through the research vehicle of an imperfect yet redeemed, fallen moral nature (Rom. 7:15-8:4; 2 Cor. 4:7).

            If we look at the detailed, biblical narrative stories of faith from Abraham through Paul, we see not only personal relationships created between people and God, and mission-plans often having enormous benefits to other people, but we also see life-scripts that are research programs into the knowledge of good and evil that are purpose-filled at the pinnacle of rational thought and reasoning.

            There is infinitely more to God’s plan of salvation than just reconciliation and addressing the guilt of our mistakes, as important as that is.

            Redemptive salvation by grace through faith points directly to Genesis 3:4-5.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 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.

            This is a classic example of a half-truth.

            What fell apart in the Garden of Eden was not an honestly contested dispute over a set of facts about what beneficial outcomes eating a particular fruit would produce.

            This dispute was about the element of trust within a personal relationship.

            It is like a parent telling their young child to look both ways before crossing the street, without explaining in details the pros and cons.

            Personal relationships between people and God are why the life-stories in the Bible are based upon faith, worked-out through experiential lessons-learned.

            The temptation in the Garden of Eden contained nothing in dispute over empirical, fact-based evidence.

            Nothing was presented in the form of evidence to back up the assertion to reject God’s word in terms of truth or authority.

            Faith and trust are central to biblical Judaism and Christianity because the fundamental issue was based upon a personal relationship and not a question of empirical facts in dispute.

            A personal relationship between people and the living God is a theme that runs throughout the Bible, that is missing in all other religions and worldviews.

The optimum way that I can acquire a genuine knowledge of good and evil, is through a guided research program while inhabiting the four-wheel-drive vehicle of my fallen yet redeemed earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7), my imperfect moral nature being the perfect lens through which to understand the subtleties of the broad array of moral concepts.

            It took a perfect person Jesus Christ to take my deserved place on the cross to satisfy perfect justice, yet one profound outcome of this event provided divine impunity for me to enter into a research program into the knowledge of good and evil in which it is a certainty that I will make mistakes that become lessons-learned rather than condemning sins (Mt. 5:6).

            This is one reason why God did not show-up in the Garden of Eden to dispute the character assassination put forward by the spiritual apparition of Satan in the holographic form of a beautiful talking serpent, because it is difficult to debate issues this deeply profound with a liar.

            The galactic irony here is that it is modern science that illuminates this component of a research program into the knowledge of good and evil contained within redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

            Another profound take-away here is that science will disappear as we now know it, the universe being temporal (Mk. 13:31; 2 Pet. 3:10).

            But a genuine knowledge of good and evil acquired through the first-hand experience of living within a God-composed journey of faith life-script lasts an eternity.

            This establishes an eternal priority ranking upon what is important in life.

            I think it takes a grasp of what is involved in a modern science research program to see the comparative quality of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts in which God displaces our ways and thoughts with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9), like a PhD professor guiding a graduate student through their thesis research program (Jn. 16:13).

            The God of the Bible is writing research programs and offering research grants in the form of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ, so that believers can obtain a genuine knowledge of good and evil through the first-hand field research of personal experience, our mistakes and shortcomings factored-in as part of the lessons-learned protocol.

            The brilliance of this is that it partly validates from an unexpected direction the claim by Jesus that He is the way, the truth, and the life to the exclusion of all other gods, religions, and philosophies. 

            Jesus said “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (Jn. 14:6).

            Only one God can be God.

            Only our Creator God can compose journeys of faith that match our unique talents and abilities, replacing our ways with His higher ways, to craft all-wheel-drive research vehicles having the lens of a fallen yet redeemed moral character through which to comprehend the subtle nuances of the knowledge of good and evil.

            Only the one real God is capable of crafting a program that identifies one of the fundamental purposes underlying the creation of the universe, inventing the concept of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which allows me to venture-out into a risk-filled journey of faith, with the real-world and rational understanding that I am certain to make many honest and unintentional mistakes (Mt.5:6).

This is an excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

Evil and Suffering in the World

            If modern science at this point in time is revealing an Intelligent Designing Agent this precise in crafting the natural world, then if the main response to the evil and suffering in this world is to merely compose life-scripts and orchestrate journeys of faith that do not altogether remove evil and suffering, then this seemingly partial solution needs explaining.

            If the response by the God of the Bible is to initiate research programs into the knowledge of good and evil as articulated in this book, now better understood through the lens of the modern scientific method, this produces the common complaint that if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere, why doesn’t He remove evil and suffering?

            The argument that the presence of evil and suffering renders God weak and incapable of providing an entirely safe and optimized environment for humans, presupposes that there is not a more important reason for God allowing evil and suffering to exist on the earth.  

            For many years, I attributed most of the blame for the fall of some of the angels in heaven, to the charismatic appeal and outward appearing beauty of Satan (Mt. 25:41; 2 Pet. 2:4; Jud. 6), being similar in character in the Bible to the account of the very nearly successful revolt of Absalom against his father David the king (2 Sam. 15:1-6).

            Some verses in the Bible imply that a third of the angels followed Satan in his revolt (Rev. 12:4), that there was war in heaven (Rev. 12:7-10), and that the kingdom of heaven suffered violence and was temporarily taken over by force (Mt. 11:12).

            Ezekiel 28:12-15 gives us some background by telling us that Satan began as one of the covering cherubs “full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, until iniquity was found in him” (paraphrased by me).

            Isaiah 14:12-17 and Luke 10:18 describe Satan’s fall from heaven.

            If Satan and a few others were the only rebels engaged in this coup attempt and insurrection in heaven, then I suppose it would have been relatively straightforward to exile and ban them from heaven to some other distant region.

            But if a third of the angels were susceptible to being drawn away through the enticing rhetoric of the liar Satan (Jn. 8:44), then God has a much larger problem on His hands.

            The question can be asked here, if God is timeless, did He know in advance that Satan would rebel and take with him a third of the angels?

            In the John 8:44 verse cited above, Jesus is recorded as saying that Satan was a murderer from the beginning, and the father of lying…of cleverly spinning the narrative away from and outside of truth.

            Revelation 13:4 refers to the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, clearly meaning Jesus Christ.

            Several places throughout the New Testament various verses say that believers will reign with Christ for ever and ever (Rev. 22:5).

            These are all realities that are timeless, but we live in the four-dimensional reality of space and time.

            Here in God’s response to evil and suffering we see the brilliance of the plan of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Yahweh in the Old Testament (Rom. 4:1-8), and in Christ in the New Testament (Lk. 23:39-43), as opposed to autonomous self-salvation through self-performed good-works.

            If the problem with one-third of the angels was their inability to discern the truth about the character and qualifications of God as the legitimate ruler of heaven, against the deceptive character assassination of a clever and charismatic liar, then one obvious solution would be to set-up a program through which His subjects could get to know Him intimately within the context of life experiences that reveal His true character.

            The plan of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ based upon a research program into the knowledge of good and evil that involves the four-wheel drive vehicle of our fallen yet redeemed moral natures, acknowledges ahead of time that God knows this requires the existence of a broken world containing evil and suffering.

            One of the admirable characteristics of a good leader is that they will not ask other people to do something that they themselves would not do.

            A captain or coronel who leads at the front of the cavalry brigade charge merits our respect and inspiration to follow them into battle.

            The God of the Bible can hardly be said to be a distant and passive participant in this plan of redemptive salvation.

            Through the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is telling us that He is standing foursquare with us in this current reality of a broken world, for the highest and best of reasons.

            As the divine Son of God taking upon Himself the singular role of being the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sins, Jesus Christ is willingly placing Himself squarely in the middle of the evil and suffering dilemma of this broken world, by personally experiencing the hate-filled rejection and physical pain of execution by crucifixion (Isaiah 53).

            At this point we can begin to understand the imaginative brilliance of the God of the Bible in formulating the program of redemptive salvation, while not removing the evil and suffering in this world.

            If we are ever going to learn the real truth about the knowledge of good and evil, and to get to know God on a personal level that will stand the test of eternity, it is not by eating a piece of fruit.

            In addition to the broad array of moral concepts, our human capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning, and the life-script of Jesus Christ all coming together in what must be human history, the fourth component of free-will choice comes into the mix.

            Free-will choice is a central pillar in the eternal reality of God.

            To have any meaning, humans must have the free-will choice to make mistakes.

            Apparently, the evil and suffering generated by our inhumanity to man, and natural disasters thrown-in, is not enough to override the incredible strength of the power of individual self-autonomy that entices us to sit atop the thrones of our lives as self-sovereign junior gods.

            Not only has God foreseen this broken world and allowed evil and suffering to exist, but He has also dialed-in the fine-tuned, delicate balance between belief and unbelief as the determining factor, excluding self-salvation through good-works (Isa. 64:6; Eph. 2:8-9).

            The verse “There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Rom. 3:10) highlights the fact that everyone is equally equipped to enter into a research program into the knowledge of good and evil, by each person universally inhabiting an imperfect moral nature.

The verse “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), highlights the fact that salvation is the free gift of God accessible to every person through faith (Eph. 2:8), but not through works.

How then does skeptical unbelief put people today in the same boat of condemnation with the angels who followed Satan in his failed coup attempt and violent insurrection.  

            The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ, the person rejected and crucified as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin (rebellion) will be the main presiding judge on Judgment Day.

            Jesus is recorded as saying: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.  But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.” (Mt. 10:32-33).

            In other words, Jesus Christ will use His substitutionary atonement obtained through the cross and the resurrection to exonerate those people who have been willing to acknowledge their imperfect moral characters (repentance) and to accept the free gift of salvation by giving Him the benefit-of-the-doubt and confessing faith in Christ (Mt. 4:17).

            For some people this leads to the last-minute “fox-hole” or death-bed confessions like that of the thief on the cross (Lk. 23:39-43), or to God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts beyond our wildest imaginations like that of the apostle Paul.

            If Jesus Christ becomes incarnate in a human body, and as His mission-plan voluntarily takes upon Himself the full penalty for mankind’s sins by dying on a Roman cross of execution, then this justifiably enables Jesus Christ as judge to extend full and unconditional pardons to people based upon the criteria that He thereby is free to determine and establish.

            But the galactic-sized insight in all of this, is that the point God is making here is so important that He is willing to come to earth in the person of the Son of God…Jesus Christ…to be the Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sins, to codify faith as the criteria to establish personal relationships, and to inaugurate research programs into the knowledge of good and evil that human beings can pursue through first-hand experiences with the impunity guaranteed through the blood shed by Jesus on the cross.   

            On January 6, 2021 in the United States the outgoing president engineered a coup attempt and a violent insurrection that threatened the existence of representative democracy in America.

            The revolt by Satan and his fallen angels threatened the good order and peace of the entire known reality of the kingdom of God.

            The stakes here are so enormous and eternally destabilizing that the current presence of evil and suffering in this world, is the only context within which to graphically demonstrate the end-points where skeptical unbelief eventually leads.

            Jesus does not come for the last time into Jerusalem on Passover week with an army of Jewish soldiers to forcibly expel the Romans out of the city and to end the occupation of the country of Israel.

            As evidenced by the history of Israel in the Old Testament, it is often a good thing to resist through military force foreign invaders having the evil intentions of plunder through conquest.

            Throughout human history, despotic autocrats in power have been justifiably overthrown through rebellions and revolutions.

            But the God of the Bible is brilliant pure light, absolute goodness, and possesses divinely timeless foresight.

            There is no justification for mounting a rebellion against the God of the Bible, other than through jealousy, envy, malice, and the raw lust for power.

            Jesus says to Pilate in the Roman judgment hall: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.” (Jn.19:11).

            Jesus says just before His death on the cross: “It is finished” (Jn.19:30), signifying that His mission-plan was complete and that all of the positive results accruing from His sacrifice were now codified forever in the cross.

            Jesus Christ is the epitome of His statement: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn. 15:13).

            As humans we possess the capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning, the complimentary existence of the broad array of moral concepts, and the life-script of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament gospels.

            But we also possess the free-will choice to accept Christ or to push Him away.

            I would think that as part of his defense when Satan stands before Jesus Christ on the Judgment Day, he will point to the multitudes of people he was able to entice to follow him in rebelling against God to pursue our own way according to the tenets of self-sovereign autonomy, by saying: “See there, I was not the only one, and therefore you cannot be correct in condemning me.  If this large a number of others freely chose to follow me instead of you, then who is to say that I am not the right choice to be God?”

            This subtly brilliant defense will not hold-up to close scrutiny, because it is exactly this autonomous self-sovereignty apart from God that produces a part of the evil and suffering in this world.

This is evidenced empirically by those people who did not give meat to the hungry, water to the thirsty, housing to the stranger, clothing to the unclothed, or visited the sick and those in prison (Mt. 25:41-46). 

Unlike the understandably naïve inability of Adam and Eve to discern truth from untruth in the perfect Garden of Eden, for people to be able to rule and to reign with Christ for ever and ever without a hiccup going forward, requires the savvy ability to individually parse the subtleties of the broad array of moral concepts within the knowledge of good and evil.

 But this also requires a personal relationship with God that relinquishes to Him the position in heaven that He alone is qualified to occupy (Jer. 31:34). 

Finally, Jesus tells the disciples about the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who will come after Jesus departs the earth and why:

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.  And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” (Jn. 16:7-8).

            The greater love exhibited through a man laying down his life for his friends (Jn. 15:13), and the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us into all truth (Jn. 16:13), cannot happen in a perfect, idyllic world not having evil and suffering.

Biblical Faith 3

            Does the life-story of Abraham match the analogy that Jesus presents of a seed falling into the ground to die, rising up to produce much fruit?

            Does the postponement of the birth of Isaac the son of promise represent God dangling the desire-of-the-heart out of the reach of Abraham and Sarah for a period of time, for a capricious and ill-intentioned motive, or does utilizing this innately created characteristic in Abraham instead produce the unique context for biblical faith to actualize, to rise-up out of the ground to become a supernaturally created, fruit-bearing tree?

            Does this concept starting with Abraham reside at the pinnacle of moral reasoning, at the very peak of importance in the long expanse of human redemptive history?

            Moving along in the Bible, certainly the life-story of Joseph in Egypt demonstrates over his lifetime the innate, in-built capacity to successfully manage the sheep herding family-business in Canaan. 

            But the series of extraordinary events that leads to Joseph governing the entire nation of Egypt during a great famine, as a Hebrew foreigner, falls outside of not only the human capacity of Joseph to contrive and self-orchestrate, but falls outside of his ability to even imagine ahead of time.

            The information-content that describes the person and life-plan destiny of Joseph, placed inside him like a seed, finds brilliant fulfillment through his God-composed life-script that begins with his innate talents and abilities, tinged with the arrogance of being his father’s favorite son. 

            These innate talents must first fall into the ground and die for a period of time as a servant-slave in Potiphar’s house, and as a falsely accused felon in Pharaoh’s prison, before this divinely composed life-script for Joseph can actualize into concrete reality.

            Moses will not commence the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt by killing an Egyptian and hiding his body in the sand.  Moses incorrectly assumed by this action that his Hebrew “brethren” (Acts 7:23-28) would recognize and acknowledge his calling to deliver them from bondage.

            No human power on earth could deliver the Israelites from bondage as slaves in Egypt.

            But at the burning bush, the innate abilities created within Moses, match-up with the God-composed life-script calling for Moses, and he enters into the spectacular and larger-than-life destiny through faith and trust in God and not in himself, that according to Hebrews 11:6 cited above pleases God and benefits a large number of people. 

            Who else in the Bible falls into this same pattern of an information-rich seed first falling into the ground to die before rising out of the ground to become an apple, orange, or avocado tree, to realize their in-built potential?

            Joshua has good reason to fear the heavily fortified, walled cities of the Canaanites that he has been tasked by God to militarily conquer.

            God says to Joshua several times throughout this campaign to conquer the Promised Land: “Fear not, neither be thou dismayed” (Josh. 8:1).

            Yet Joshua and the Israelites have to learn the hard-way on two occasions about the difficulty of the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty (Josh. 7:3-5, 9:14-15).

            Certainly, David knows intimately about the concept of a seed falling into the ground to die, rising up to become a specific “tree” with a specified purpose and destiny bearing much fruit.

            Even though David is anointed at the age of seventeen by the great prophet Samuel to become the next king in Israel, David somehow understands that he cannot help-out God to fulfill his calling when on two occasions David could have taken the life of King Saul (1 Sam. 24:4-7, 26:8-12).

            It would be safe to say that like Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison three months before God gives the famine dream to Pharaoh, David’s low-point at Ziklag (1 Sam. 30:6) comes at the end of the long process of a seed dying in the ground.

            Both Joseph and David rise-up into their respective destinies having their innate talents and abilities still intact, but now redirected within the narrow gate and the hard way of God-sovereignty (Mt. 7:13-14) to be now able to “bring forth much fruit.”   

            Similar scenarios of seeds falling first into the ground to die can be derived from the stories of Gideon (Jud. 7:2), Ruth (Ruth. 1:16-18), Hannah (1 Sam. 1:15-16), Elijah (1 Ki. 19:10), Jeremiah (Jer. 20:7-9), Esther and Mordecai (Est. 4:16-17), Daniel (Dan. 2:12-18), Ezra (Ezra 4:21-24), Nehemiah (Neh. 1:11), Joseph and Mary (Lk. 2:41-52), John the Baptist (Jn. 3:30), Peter (Lk. 22:61-62), James the half-brother of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:7), the disciples (Mk. 14:50), the early Christian church as a whole (Acts 8:1), the apostle Paul (Acts 9:3-9), and Jesus Christ (Lk. 22:42), to name a few.

            Self-sovereignty is incapable of “bringing forth much fruit” according to autonomous individualism because human beings lack divine foresight and timeless foreknowledge.

            Only God can write the extraordinary and unconventional biblical narrative stories of faith matching the in-built, personal capabilities of the people of faith with callings that have supernatural missions, goals, and outcomes that are only assessable through the biblical faithdescribed in Hebrews 11:1 and 11:6.

            Falling into the ground as a seed to die, picking-up our cross to follow Jesus, entering in at the narrow gate (Mt. 7:13-14), ”hating” this life in terms of “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1Jn. 2:15-16) are the necessary components of making the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty, in the realm of the kingdom of God where all things are possible.

            In John 15:5 Jesus is recorded as saying: “I am the vine, ye are the branches:  He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

            The supernatural participation of God in the biblical narrative stories of faith that separates-out atheists and agnostics into unbelief, is the very thing that creates the life within the God-composed journey of faith life-scripts.

            The self-sovereignty of going our own way is the wide gate and the broad way of Matthew 7:13-14 that leads to destruction, because on that broad road of self-autonomy God has no opportunity to make the connection between our created abilities and the life-script He has written for us that can bring forth much fruit.

            Self-sovereignty is the way of rebellion and chaos, of thinking our ways are better than God’s ways and is unacceptable in the kingdom of God in a timeless eternity.

            Only faith and trust in God will push through the adversity of falling into the ground as a seed to first have our own will and ideas die, in order for God to raise us up according to our in-built capacity and destiny, to walk with Him through life along a supernatural path that has the unique and individual context to bring forth much fruit as articulated in the brilliant John 12:24-25 verses quoted above.

Biblical Faith 2

            I do not think it would be a stretch to infer from the life-script of God’s calling of Abraham to say that the desire to produce a family was a high-priority in the information-package divinely created within the “seed” that describes the person and character of Abraham.

            Abraham has everything…wealth, possessions, servants, and a beautiful wife he loves…but he does not have a family upon arrival in Canaan.

            At the very center of the God-composed life-script for Abraham is a promise of descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth, pinpointing at the outset of his calling a divinely created, in-built desire-of-the-heart for Abraham that is accurately utilized by God in fashioning Abraham to become over time, through a series of divinely crafted events the “father of faith.”

            Yet this same created, innate desire for a normal family-life also produces the context for the problem with Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael. 

            This sets-up the supreme challenge of faith for Abraham on Mount Moriah (modern day Jerusalem) that may be the most difficult test that any human being has ever been asked of God to face, other than Jesus Christ as the Passover Lamb of God two thousand years later at Calvary.

            In other words, God not only crafted the life-script adventure of faith for Abraham, but God as Creator placed within Abraham the unique information-content of being the right “seed” to take this adventure of faith on God’s terms all the way to a successful conclusion, to produce good fruit (Heb. 11:17-19; Rom. 4:3).

            What makes the biblical narrative stories of faith so extraordinary as to validate their divine origin starting with Abraham, is that Abraham’s own ability to produce children of promise through Sarahneeded to fall into the ground to die like a seed in order to rise up as a supernaturally endowed and beneficial life-story. 

            This then rises far above the worldly conventionality of self-produced outcomes through autonomous individualism (Gen. 17:15-19).

            It would appear from the biblical narrative stories of faith that the big-picture, fundamental objective is worldly unconventional to the core.

            The big-picture objective gleaned from the biblical narrative stories of faith examples is not to validate our worth and value according to self-reliant self-achievement (Mk. 8:36) using our created talents and abilities apart from God, but instead to validate an entirely different objective.

            That entirely different objective is to create the unique contexts for biblical faith to actualize into personal relationships between people and God, at the height of our created purpose and destiny.

            Can Abraham produce children on his own within worldly conventional normalcy and thinking, without God’s divine intervention, outside of the promises of God?

            The answer is yes. 

            After the death of Sarah, Abraham took another wife, Keturah, who gave birth to Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

            We should not forget that Abraham produced Ishmael his first son through Hagar (Gen. 16:15). 

            But we do know from scripture (Gen. 17:19) that Abraham cannot produce Isaac the son of promise, other than through Sarah.

            The three men that visited Abraham and Sarah in the plains of Mamre recorded in Genesis chapter 18, the leader being called Lord by Abraham (I believe this was Jesus the Son of God) confirms for us that in this critical opening scenario introducing the biblical narrative stories of faith, this worldly unconventional and innovative component of God validates His divine participation in the affairs of mankind.

            This is for the highest imaginable reasons.

            The life-story of Abraham does not validate the fact that Abraham is capable of producing a large and happy family-life on his own according to conventional thinking, but instead that God can create the new reality of biblical faith as defined in Hebrews 11:1.

            The life-script for Abraham has a gap in time between the initial calling of Abraham with God’s promise of descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth, and the fulfillment of this promise coming years later, that forms the context for this biblical faith to actualize into real human life experience.

Biblical Faith

            When God created the seeds for apple, orange, peach, and avocado trees…and for corn, wheat, and barley crops…He placed within each unique type of seed the information that would not only grow into large-sized trees and farm fields as far as the eye can see, but would also produce very specific and different kinds of edible fruits and grains.

            John 12:24-25 records the words of Jesus:

24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 

25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.                         

            In these verses Jesus introduces a concept that is unique in all of human experience and literary imagination, yet is universally standard within every biblical narrative story of faith.

            This includes His own experience in Gethsemane, at Calvary Hill, and on Resurrection Day.

            There is a pattern that is discernable within the callings of the people of faith in the Bible starting with Abraham’s detailed and highly specific life-script, all the way through to the calling and ministry of the apostle Paul. 

            This pattern authenticates the divine origin of the biblical narrative stories of faith, but at the same time also provides inspirational guidance as to what Christians today should expect in their callings and mission-plans from God.

            Like the information that is contained within the seed that grows into an apple, orange, or fig tree, God as our Creator knows exactly the precise information He has placed within each and every human being.

            The analogy that Jesus uses in John 12:24 above, of a seed first having to die in the ground in order to emerge as a tree or plant as applied to the people of faith in the biblical narrative stories of faith, reveals to us over the long expanse of human redemptive history different types of people, callings, and missions that match the in-built personalities, capabilities, and characteristics of each specific person.

            This islike the seeds for apple, orange, or avocado trees.

            Like the farmer recognizing and knowing the type of seed they are planting, God knows what He has placed within us to be able to enter successfully into an adventure of faith and to fulfill our unique and singular missions with His assistance along the way.

            One question that is crucial here is how does the apple tree know when it is time to stop growing and begin to produce fruit, to produce apples?

            This information is contained initially in the apple seed, and then in the individual cells of the apple tree.

            The same is true for the born-again Christian today, no matter what is our calling and circumstances.

            One thing that pleases God according to Hebrews 11:6 cited above, is to be able to match-up the innate, in-built capacities He has created within us with a God-composed life-script actualized within the events and circumstances of this present world, for our benefit and for the benefit of other people, through a relationship of mutual trust and faith.

            This dynamic of an adventure of faith is designed by God to last and to endure for eternity.

            This insight of John 12:24-25, universal within every biblical narrative story of faith is so deep it eludes all naturalistic explanations for its origin in the marketplace of ideas. 

            It completely surpasses the reach of the worldly conventionality of humanistic literary imagination.

            This concept is found exclusively in all of literature only in the Bible, actualized in the counterintuitive idea of our worldly conventional ideas dying on our individual crosses, as seeds planted in the ground, alongside Jesus on His cross (Mk. 8:34-35).

            God displaces our self-directed ways with His higher ways and thoughts within a God-composed journey of faith life-script, brilliantly replacing self-sovereignty with God-sovereignty which only God could do.

We Cannot Orchestrate a Journey of Faith

            One of the all-time classic themes of the Bible is that the God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts recorded in the biblical narrative stories of faith are beyond our capacity to contrive or to even imagine ahead of time. 

            As the Creator of everything and everyone, God alone knows our individual attributes and abilities, and thus has the singularly unique starting point for crafting life-scripts for an Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Peter, and Paul, to name a few of the people of faith in the Bible. 

            Adventures of faith, because of their supernatural origin, stretch people to achieve more than they could have imagined possible. 

            Adventures of faith reveal that God knows us inside and out by the precise matching of our adventure of faith to talents, abilities, and newfound, morally noble characteristics we did not even know ahead of time we possessed. 

            If we could go back in time and interview the people of faith in the Bible, they would tell us unanimously to a person that they initially had no idea they had the innate ability to go as far as God took them, through their individually crafted adventures of faith.

            I think it would be reasonably safe to say that Abraham did not see himself as the future “father of faith” as he walked from the city of Haran toward the land of Canaan (Gen. 17:18). 

            Although Joseph probably had a good sense of his innate leadership talents, it is doubtful that he ever imagined that he would someday become governor of Egypt, while he labored in Potiphar’s house and languished in Pharaoh’s prison. 

            Moses certainly has no way of seeing into the future the great deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, as he tries unsuccessfully to talk God out of the immense calling at the burning bush that Moses now feels he is no longer a qualified candidate for (Ex. 3:11).     

            Gideon objects to God’s calling for him to deliver Israel from the oppressive occupation by the Midianites, saying that he is the least even within his own family (Jud. 3:15).  Gideon then comes-up with his proverbial “fleece-test” to confirm that he correctly understands God’s intentions for him 

            As Ruth the foreigner follows her mother-in-law Naomi back to Naomi’s native country Israel, Ruth has no idea that she will capture the attention and affection of the wealthy, noble, and godly Boaz.  Through her marriage to Boaz, Ruth becomes part of the royal lineage that produced King David and culminated, roughly a thousand years later, in the birth of Jesus Christ the eternal King and Savior.

            Elijah complains to God that he is all alone in his opposition to the evil king Ahab and queen Jezebel (1 Ki. 19:14). 

            Jeremiah protests to God that he is too young to be a prophet (Jer. 1:6). 

            We detect in both Ezra and Nehemiah an underlying, suspenseful trepidation just below the surface in their difficult callings to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem, and to rebuild the temple.

            Certainly, Peter is utterly clueless as he goes out of the courtyard of Caiaphas to weep bitterly over his failure to courageously stand by Jesus during His night trial.  Unbeknownst to Peter at the time, standing courageously alongside Jesus would have resulted in Peter needlessly occupying a fourth cross on Calvary the next day. 

            Peter did not realize at the time that the crucifixion of the Son of God for the sins of the world was preordained before the creation of the universe (1 Pet. 1:20), and that Peter’s role at that moment was not to be a martyr for the faith, but to instead be one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem. 

            Being the head of the early Christian church and its chief spokesman in Jerusalem amidst intense opposition required a quality of courage and fidelity that Peter painfully discovered in the courtyard of Caiaphas that fateful night, that Peter did not possess on his own without the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:8-12).

            Certainly, as Saul/Paul approached the city of Damascus to arrest Christians, he had no idea that he would soon become the foremost champion of the very faith that he started-out opposing with such fearsome persecution. 

            At that precise moment, before the supernatural light of Jesus Christ shined down from heaven upon him, Paul had no idea that he possessed the inner capacity to become the missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world.

            Paul could not contemplate ahead of time that he would compose the divinely inspired New Testament letters to the early Christian churches he helped create, that he would develop the love for other people that could write First Corinthians 13:4-8 now famous throughout the modern world, or that he had the innate people skills that could form the intimate relationships revealed in Romans chapter 16.

            All of these people, along with every person of faith recorded in the Bible would testify that the higher plans that God had for them in life stretched them beyond anything they could or would have imagined (Psalm 23).    

            This component of biblical faiththat is a stretch beyond our human ability to contrive or imagine, argues for the divine origin of the Bible. 

            Biblical faith is not armchair philosophy. 

            No human could or would invent it through contemplative imagination.

            The element in the biblical narrative storylines of God displacing our ways with His higher ways is the factual component that entirely excludes all humanistic explanations for the origin of these stories.

            Atheistic critics of Christianity and the Bible today completely miss this biblical faith component in the narrative stories of faith, incorrectly interpreting as myth what in actuality is beyond the inventive imagination of humanistic conventional thinking. 

            The biblical narrative in a modern world inserts an alternate worldview to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking. 

            The biblical narrative offers a new and living way (Heb. 10:20) into human life that contains the guided trajectories of purpose and meaning, in a true way that cannot be orchestrated through worldly conventional normalcy.

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