“Political” Musings on the Fiery Furnace (3 of 4)

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America, american culture, christendom, church, God, idolatry, old testament, politics

“They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.” (Daniel 3.28b)

This is the third of four posts offering reflections on the “political lessons” we learn from the story in Daniel 3 about  Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego being thrown into a fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. See previous posts here and here. I’m offering nine reflections in all, and 4-7 are below.

My Answers to Ty’s Questions

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american culture, apologetics, church, crucifixion, God, homosexuality, politics

A while back my good friend Ty posted a series of questions addressed to me on his blog. Don’t know if they were rhetorical, but I suppose not. Here are his questions and my answers (in italics). Thanks Ty!

Is war evil? I think most people would recognize some level of evil in war. The questions, I suppose, are (a) whether it is a “necessary” evil, and (b) whether it is categorically evil.

What do we do if Christ really wasn’t raised from the dead? Something else. I’m with Paul on this one; if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then Dawkins, Hitchens, and Onfray are right – we are pitiable idiots.

What if it were actually proven that He didn’t? Therein lies the problem: it can’t be. To put it in technical terms, the resurrection is nonfalsifiable. There is simply no way for it to be disproven. On the flip side, there is thus no way for it to be proven either.

Is the church – or to what degree is the church – merely a form a societal mind control?

Two Types of Idolatry

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God, idolatry

This is very much a work in progress… I’d love to hear what you think…

I see two types of idolatry:

1.   Treat something else like God.

1. Faith – place our confidence or trust in something else to do what only God can do or has promised to do.
2. Love – offer our service or devotion (time, energy, work, sacrifice) to some group, principle, practice, or ideal.

2.   Treat God like something else.

1. Narcissism – turn God into a bigger version of us: looks like us, inhabits our territory, stands for our ideas or ideals, etc.
2. Magic – turn God into a means to get us what we want: power, security, food, pleasure, comfort, wealth, image, success, wisdom, etc.

Why Should We Trust the Bible?

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apologetics, bible, faith, God, history, jesus, resurrection, science, scripture

Two preliminary points:

(1) My faith is not in the Bible itself; my faith is in Jesus. I follow a person, not a book. But I do believe in and trust the full truthfulness of Scripture in its witness to God and his purposes with us.

(2) All of us have to trust in something, whether an ancient book or the mindset of our culture. Many people in our world distrust the Bible, choosing instead to discover the truth on their own. What we don’t seem to realize is that we have been socially conditioned to make this decision. Shun tradition and follow your intuition, right? In other words, someone (or rather some tradition) has told us to think like this. The idea that we are totally deciding things on our own is a myth. We all make a decision (whether conscious or not) to trust someone or something. So even if you choose to deny the Bible, you’re trusting some other tradition as your authority. I just  think this is the most reliable tradition.

Here are three reasons why:

This is What’s Wrong with Our World

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depravity, discipleship, God, gospel, idolatry, jesus, new testament, old testament, politics, prophets, salvation, sin

It had been way too long since I’d set aside a significant chunk of time for reflection and prayer, so this morning I went to Vasquez Rocks. I have some messages and decisions coming up so the timing was perfect, and I want to share some of the fruit of my time up there. I’ve been thinking lots lately about sin and idolatry and that sort of thing. (It’s made me extra cheery and fun to be around, I’m sure!) I think that a clear understanding of how sin works both personally and societally, and specifically the dynamics of idolatry, will go a long way in helping us understand the mess our world is in and hopefully how to move towards healing it. Today I’ll write about the five stages or steps of the downward spiral we call “sin” and tomorrow I’ll write about how Jesus overcomes this problem piece by piece.

1. We refuse to trustfully acknowledge God as superior, and so we set up ourselves as competition. This is clearly the issue in Genesis 3 – we want to be like God, knowing all the things that he did. Or as Paul puts it in Romans 1, we refused to thank him and glorify him as God. The root of this is fear that God can’t be trusted; we don’t think he really has our best interests in mind; we think he’s holding out on us. It is rooted in a denial of God’s love for us. I’d call this first step rebellion.

How do we know God exists?

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apologetics, church, God, jesus, real life church, son of God, theology

This past week I began a 3-week class at RLC called “Ask Anything.” It’s a Q&A format centered on whatever people want to talk about, but each week I’ll tackle one of the “big questions” lots of people seem to be asking. I’ll post my reflections on those questions here on the blog each week. We started with a question that seems foundational to many: How do we know God exists?

First we have to acknowledge that we don’t know for sure that God exists, any more than we know for sure that he doesn’t. Absolute certainty about whether God exists or not is impossible.

Some say God doesn’t exist because God’s existence can’t be proven “scientifically.” But if anything like what we mean by the word “god” does exist, there is no way science could answer the question one way or another. Others might say that God has to exist because we’ve experienced him; but there is no way to know for sure that our experience matches the reality we’re claiming is behind it.

It is impossible for us to find a place or perspective from where we can look down and determine God’s existence either way. This would only be possible if God were below us, which would make him something other than God.

Instead of certainty, we are dealing with probability. Those who affirm or deny God’s existence are looking at the world, gathering information, and making an educated guess about the best explanation for what they see. Some think the world is best explained by the existence of a God. Others think the opposite. But neither position is inherently more logical, and both involve faith – a risky commitment we each have to make given our limited knowledge and perspective.

Within this, there are many reasons I think it more likely that God exists than that he doesn’t:

Life Journal 004 // the God of Jonah

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creation care, God, grace, jonah, life journal, old testament, prophets, salvation, theology

Following the Life Journal reading plan, yesterday we reflected on the prophet Joel and today I’d like to take a quick look at Jonah. Let’s make some observations about the God revealed in Jonah.

The God of Jonah changes his mind. Actually, the text says God repents (3.10). That’s the word used there, I believe. It’s translated “relent” but that’s only not to tick off the Calvinists. I’m not trying to be argumentative (thanks to today’s NT reading), but this verse doesn’t sit well with the picture of God whose plans are set in stone, less still one who controls every little thing. The picture of God here is radically relational – he genuinely interacts with us, so much so that our actions call out unplanned responses from within him.

The God of Jonah does things we think are wrong. I love 4.1: “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.”