A Little More Light - Part 3

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Friday, March 22, 2019

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  2 Timothy 3:16

Although a “quadrilateral” has four parts, today’s Part 3 finishes this series. 

In thinking about Experience (the assurance of salvation) and Reason (God’s gift to us mortals of being self-aware and drawing intelligent, ethical, and moral conclusions), the remaining two are Tradition (of the church, or doctrine) and Scripture, God’s Word.  For me, these last two are so intertwined I find it impossible to separate them.  The reasoning here is that God’s Word (not exclusively the 66 books we call the Bible), but literally, God’s Words to humanity throughout the course of time are that from which the doctrines of the church (traditions, if you will) were born.  Everything the church does, from worship, benevolence, proclaiming God’s love, mercy, peace, and righteousness, to baptizing and discipling, are extensions of Holy Writ.  We do that to which Scripture calls and empowers believers.

Paul’s admonition to Timothy is not only defining, concerning Scripture, it is also the chief example of how doctrine/tradition and Scripture are hand-in-glove tools of God’s Spirit, the light and power of God’s will here on earth.  Scripture tells us what is wrong and right, and compels us to the right, instead of the wrong.  Such is the nature of the Scripture’s impact, driving church tradition, the doctrines that guide, inform and, by the power of God’s Spirit, transform human life into new life.  This is the essence of church tradition (not traditional acts, such as observing a festival, or hanging hats in the foyer), but direction…moving towards the light.

By nature, I have always had an ambivalent, tenuous relationship with God’s Word.  There is this love affair with my Creator within me which aspires to be obedient to God…a hungering-after His righteousness and thirsting for His will to be fully in control of Russell.  And in the opposing corner lurks that human nature inherited from Adam…always willing to have a break from my responsibility to respond to the Director of this symphony called life.  When that lurking Adam-nature wins out I become a wanderer more than a Pilgrim.

Scripture and the Tradition of God’s people, from the time of Job’s troubles until this very day, are the evidence I can see of God’s pull on my soul towards Him.  It draws me to a scary life…a life walking without sight, but rather in faith.

It is this life that requires more light in the soul than on the physical path.  That light comes best when Scripture, Reason, Experience, and Tradition move in concert within me, assuring, encouraging, directing, and correcting my ways:

·      Experience, or the assurance of salvation is what rekindles the courage inside me to put one foot in front of the other and keep-on. 

·      Reason is God’s gift that helps me mindfully-reject dark enemies in favor of Godly joys.  This is my weapon in the hand against straying into the temptations that abound. 

·      Tradition, the way our faith family has lived in the experience of salvation and carried the sword of reason, is the well-beaten path, blazed by that great cloud of witnesses, the God-following community. 

·      Scripture is like the shepherd of God’s supreme authority of a love letter to whosoever will join Him on the great adventure of marching to Zion, journeying-on to that place of still water which restores my soul.

For You Today

It’s a dark world out there…and God has provided all the tools you need to keep moving towards the light and sharing that light with others along your way. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

Meditating on Miracles

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Friday, January 18, 2019

I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever.  I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever.  Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise!  No one can measure his greatness.  Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power.  I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.  Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness.  Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness; they will sing with joy about your righteousness.   Psalm 145:1-7(NLT)

Every now and then I read something that pushes back against my long and closely-held beliefs.  It’s not a bad thing to touch base with why you believe something, and not something else.  That gives you the opportunity to have your heart reassured that the anchor is still there.  Or, it gives you ample reason to reexamine something you may be questioning.  Either way, it is not wrong to use reason to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (as Scripture[2] urges). 

This is very Wesleyan, part of the Quadrilateral’s methodology to determine how we shall interpret a Godly approach to life.  Scripture is our keystone, the bedrock authority, and it is supplemented with reason, experience, and tradition of the church.  By “supplement” we strongly mean just that.  Scripture is God’s Word; reason, experience, and tradition are human thought.  Considering the nature of God (who does not lie or make mistakes), and humans (who frequently lie, especially in any branch of government, and make huge, stupid mistakes), it is a good practice to have a bedrock belief that, when your thoughts contradict God’s Word, the default ought to place faith in what God has declared, rather than human imagination.

I love reading about the founding fathers of our nation, particularly the presidents.  I’m currently reading a huge volume on James Madison, who, as a young man, was instrumental in constructing the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  His was a brilliant mind, and although quiet by nature, had such a discipline and studious way about him, that he steered the Constitutional Convention and subsequent First Congress through the ratification process to successfully unite the states from 13 nearly separate countries into what we now enjoy as a strong and vital federally-governed, constitutional republic.

James Madison’s good friend and Revolutionary-era ally was Thomas Jefferson.  Their friendship included many brilliant discussions on freedom, government, and life in general.  Among the views they shared was a distinct unbelief when it came to the supernatural or miraculous.  It is a commonly held piece of history that Jefferson created his own “Bible” by cutting out favorite passages of the New Testament which depicted or explained the morals and exemplary character of Jesus and pasting them together in a notebook.  It is usually called The Jefferson Bible, and it has no trace of anything supernatural.

One author expressed it this way:

The most interesting, and disappointing, aspect of the Thomas Jefferson Bible is the fact that, as a naturalist, Thomas Jefferson did not believe in the supernatural. He therefore removed virtually all the miraculous events recorded in the Gospels. While some references to angels, heaven, hell, and a future eternal life remain, the accounts of Jesus’ miracles, allusions to the deity of Christ, and the story of Jesus’ resurrection are absent.[3]

The resurrection? Mr. Jefferson; Mr. Madison…REALLY?  From a purely theological basis, what part of Christianity makes any sense whatsoever without the resurrection of Christ?  Yet, Jefferson (and his close friend Madison) did not think supernatural events, being unexplained by natural science, were worthy of holding close.  But Christianity is entirely faith-based.  Scripture[4] declares that we walk (live in Christ) by faith, not by sight.  You do not need the brilliant mind of a Jefferson or Madison to have faith in Jesus from the virgin birth to the resurrection; just a little humble trust in God.

For You Today

With all due respects to our founding fathers, if all Jesus was is summed up in his morals and ethics, how is he the savior of our souls?  Have a little faith, Thomas!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com

[2] Philippians 2:12

[3] Darrell L. Bock, Rediscovering the Real Lost Gospel (quoted on GotQuestions.com)

[4] 2 Corinthians 5:7

Hope - Despair

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Monday, July 30, 2018

For we live by believing and not by seeing.   

2 Corinthians 5:7^(NLT)

I’ve still got the dog tags from my stint in the U.S. Army.  Every soldier wears these for identification in case you’re wounded or dead and need to be identified.  There is a line on the tag which is for religious information; mine read no preference.  After all, I was 19, and knew everything.  I was in ignorance…literally.  I identified as an agnostic, one who couldn’t be said to be an atheist, but rather chose to simply say nobody can actually know if there is a god or not.  The word’s etymology says it all.  In ancient Greek gnosis is knowledge; if you put an “a” in front it turns into a negative (a·gnosis), and it simply designates the opposite of knowledge.  An agnostic says you’re against knowing!  How appropriate for a 19-year-old know-it-all!

Scripture declares that our faith (everyone has at least a seed of faith) is what will produce hope (as opposed to despair).  Faith, nurtured and given a chance to grow, naturally moves towards He who IS hope, Jesus Christ, crucified, buried, resurrected on the third day, ascended to the Father in Heaven, and coming again to judge the quick and the dead.

Now, at 19, this slow learner wasn’t ready to understand that, or admit it.  It was “safer” (so I thought in my 19-year-old wisdom) to toddle off to Vietnam with agent orange, bullets and bombs, and anti-personnel mines everywhere you walk, with any faith-belief system placed on-hold. Because, in my chosen ignorance – agnosticism, knowledge that you KNOW you can’t know anyway…well, the reality is, I just didn’t want to think my parents might be right.  The government had issued me a flak jacket, helmet, and M-14 rifle; that seemed a whole lot more protection than a god I couldn’t see.  I had 19-year-old wisdom, after all, and anyone that wise understands, it’s all up to chance, and the strong are the ones who survive and get it done.

Fast forward a half-century.

I’m a lot older now…and just a little wiser than that kid getting on a plane for Vietnam.  What I discovered in the interim is two-fold:

1.      It is only by the grace of the God I put on-hold that I was not killed that year in my agnostic wisdom and woke-up in hell.

2.      Even if a person is struggling with faith in God, choosing to believe what you cannot seem to prove is smarter than just ignoring Him with a fancy-sounding name, like agnostic.

There are, after all, only two possibilities:

1.      There is no god…it’s all as Karl Marx phrased it, that religion is the opiate of the masses, just a pacifier to suck-on to get through life without going mad.

2.      There is God…and, as Creator and Sustainer of all life, He is personal and has a prior claim on our lives, so we’d better get our stuff together and honor Him.

But, even putting aside the agnostic’s chief rationale, that you really can’t know for sure that God exists, there is a firm footing to be gained in choosing to believe anyway.  That footing (believe it or not) is Karl Marx – the opiate, (drug, if you will) of faith does indeed produce hope.  And hope is a whole lot lovelier than despair to walk around with, even if there isn’t a God.

From one who has been on both sides of that equation – I choose hope; I choose faith in God. 

And, incidentally, when I chose to walk by faith, and not by my willful agnosticism, a wonderful thing happened; my faith grew into hope in the faith once-delivered to the saints.  And I understood agnosticism is just as empty-headed as it implies.  You can know He is real, and His love will keep you with assurance that you are His, and loved.

For You Today

By the way, did you know Karl Marx was right at this point:  without acting on our faith, trusting in the God we can’t see – life will not make any sense, and will lead you to despair, and the ultimate choice for the agnostic or atheist – opting out.  There is a long list[2] of well-known people living against-faith who have done that – Ernest Hemmingway, Robyn Williams, and Anthony Bourdain, just to name a few.  In the end their disposition is not much different than one of the most famous – Judas Iscariot.

So, here’s the advice on struggling with faith – do what John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was advised by Peter Boehler[3] a wise Moravian missionary.  Wesley was struggling to have faith; Boehler said:  Preach faith until you have faith. 

So, my friend, walk by faith until your need for sight disappears!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] 23 Lists (celebrities who have committed suicide)

[3] See Boehler on Wikipedia.com