Tag Archives: atheism

Acts of God

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word”  (Hebrews 1:3, NIV).

“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”  (Matthew 5:45, ESV).

If nature’s laws were not universal and consistent, science would be impossible. Experiments are worthless if we cannot be assured that the same thing will happen again under the same conditions. Without universal laws of nature, life would be chaotic and very difficult (if it would be possible at all). What if water boiled at 100 degrees celsius today, but under the same conditions tomorrow it wouldn’t boil until it reached twice that temperature? Actually, we wouldn’t even have the celsius scale to measure it, since celsius is calibrated according to the freezing and boiling points of water! What if the magnetic North Pole moved around randomly? Compasses wouldn’t work. What if gravity fluctuated erratically? Let’s say gravity suddenly became the same strength on earth as it is on the moon, then a week later it was equivalent to Neptune? If I weigh 180 lbs on earth, I’d weigh just 30 lbs (yes, thirty!) when gravity shifted to Moon-Strength, and I’d weight a whopping 3,078 lbs (one and one-half tons!) when Neptune-Strength gravity kicked in. Aren’t you glad we live in a world where nature is consistent?

Storms, accidents, and natural disasters impact both moral and immoral people. Earthquakes, tornados, droughts: all indiscriminately effect Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and agnostics; in short, everyone. 

Everything in the natural order works according to established laws. God is not the direct (efficient) cause of everything that happens. I’ve heard and read preachers who say that God makes the breeze blow the branches of the trees. When those who believe this way say, “God is in control,” they see him as the immediate cause of everything.  The trouble with this micromanaging approach to God’s sovereignty is, it ignores a fundamental reality: we are living on a planet that is separated from God. There is evidence of God’s absence on earth, and this reinforces the argument of the atheist. However, as we’ve seen there is also reason and evidence to believe in the existence of God. So, what’s going on? 

The Fall includes, not only human beings, but all of creation: 

“the creation was subjected to futility… and bondage to decay…. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now”  (Romans 8:20, 21 & 22). 

Only after the Son of God returns to earth to reign over and transform everything and everyone, will life be what it should. Until then, we are living in a broken, dangerous world, a world from which we need to be saved.

I am not advocating deism, the belief that God created everything and then withdrew. God is indeed still in control. He remains all powerful, and all knowing. What I am saying is God’s control over the universe is mediated through the laws of physics and nature that he set up. I do believe that God is omnipresent. However, God’s presence is not manifest to his creation naturally. Again, we can see evidence of God in the order of creation, but we do not naturally perceive God anywhere. He is hidden. “No one has seen God at any time….” It is critical that we understand this in order to answer the question, “Why is there evil in the world?” It is a fallen world, and that extends to every part of creation.

Miracle

God does sometimes act upon the world by superseding the laws of nature, which we call a miracle. However, he does not regularly interfere in the natural order, not even for good people, not even for his own people. God is unlikely to work a miracle because of the selfish prayers of someone who feels entitled to have things their way! I don’t believe God makes it a habit of changing the outcome of a football game because I pray for my favorite team, nor will he make it stop raining just so my family may have a nice picnic. Our prayers need to be less selfish.

“If the course of nature is the work of an intelligent Being, should we not expect that he would vary the course of nature only infrequently at times of great importance?” 

(William Paley)

“That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore, stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare.” 

“But if matter is to serve as a neutral field it must have a fixed nature of it’s own. 

“If a ‘world’ or material system had only a single inhabitant it might conform at every moment to his wishes– ‘trees for his sake would crowd into a shade.’

“but if you were introduced into a world which thus varied at my every whim, you would be quite unable to act in it and would thus lose the exercise of your free will.”

“In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him– if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking– then you could not have a game at all.

“So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order are at once the limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole conditions under which any such life is possible.”

 (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp, 31-32)

Providence

 God may act without superseding or suspending the laws of nature. Instead, as the master of time and space, he has arranged for things to occur in a specific order with a specific purpose in mind. We may call such activity providence. We can see that the entire universe is an act of providence.  Providence in an individual’s life may be understood to be “a coincidence that God has arranged.” Miracles of providence are common in the lives of believers.

“All things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

I believe that is is essential for believers to recognize God’s providential activity, and learn what he has in mind for each circumstance and event in our lives. Further, we can have confidence in a good, loving and powerful God to turn even the worst situation into something that works out for our good and his glory.

Obsessed With Control

Humans have become obsessed with control. We want everything to go our way. Science has been so successful at informing us about the natural world and giving us control over it that we are frustrated when we cannot do so. C.S. Lewis observed a connection between the motives of those who seek to manipulate reality through magic and those who use applied science.

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”

I think many of us pray for the same reason. 

What Did I Do to Deserve This?

There exists a common belief (call it a suspicion, perhaps) that those who are struck by catastrophe or physical infirmity have done something to deserve it. I was told by a devout believer that my hearing loss in one ear is God telling me that I’m not listening. I suppose that could be. I really need to pay attention to God’s leading. However, God has a greater purpose than punishment when bad things happen to us. I have an entire section in this book dedicated to that theme: Not All Suffering is Equal… or Evil.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in 2005; many people lost their lives and many more lost their homes. Then on the 16th anniversary of Katrina in 2021, hurricane Ida came ashore and took out the power grid of the Big Easy. The entire state of Texas nearly lost its power grid due to freezing temperatures in February of 2021. A tornado swept through Garland and Rowlett the day after Christmas 2015. Were these natural catastrophes sent by God? After all, these kinds of events (tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis) are sometimes called “Acts of God.” Is the Lord trying to say something to us? The Lord is always seeking to lead and teach his people. However, the answer is not as simple as: “God is punishing our sins.” Did these storms and catastrophes only affect the property or take the lives of people who have done something wrong? Hopefully, your answer is “no.” 

I am sure good people died and I know that there were Christians in the 2015 tornado who lost everything. Did God work in people’s lives during and after these catastrophes? Yes. The Garland/Rowlett tornado struck the day after Christmas of 2015. That may seem cruel, until you recognize that many people were not home that day. As a result many deaths were likely averted. Did God offer protection to those who were praying and paying attention to his Spirit’s leading? I believe so. We’ll look at that very important aspect to God’s salvation in the next chapter.

Jesus Healing a Man Born Blind

Jesus healed a blind man once, whom the people of his day presumed had done something to deserve it.

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ 

‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him'”  (John 9:2-3, NIV). 

God has good reason for allowing natural afflictions and tragedies to occur in people’s lives: so that the Lord’s redemptive work may be observed in and through them. In the case of the man who was born blind that work was the miracle of physical sight that resulted in the revelation of Jesus.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 

“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” 

Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” 

Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him”

(John 9:32-38).

Some years ago member of our church had a stroke and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Those among us who’ve been exposed to this understand the fear, confusion, anxiety and panic a stroke causes in the person who has experienced it. The following is part of a text she sent me.

“I am being humbled and rediscovering the presence of God especially when I panic. The only thing getting me thru a panic attack is his presence and looking at others in the rehab part where I am now I know just how lucky I am and how much God is with me.”

God is at work, friends, even and especially in our darkest moments. He will be with you if you will call on the name of His Son Jesus, and receive His Spirit. “No one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him” (John 1:18). God has revealed himself through Jesus. He is the light of the world (John 1:12).

Jesus gave sight to the man born blind, and he will open your eyes too. However, this also demonstrates the spiritual blindness of the religious who claim to know God, but follow their own ways. 

“Jesus said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.’ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, ‘What? Are we blind too?’ Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.’” (John 9:39-41, NIV)

Don’t presume to understand why seemingly bad things have occurred in someone else’s life. Trust that God is good and loving, and that he is at work—even when we cannot see it. The world is separated from God by sin, but that doesn’t mean He is not at work in the world. Christ is at work all around us through the Holy Spirit, seeking to save those who are lost. God rested from his work of creation on the seventh day, but Jesus said, “My Father is still working and I am working” (John 5:17).

As a believer, God is working within me to make me like His Son, instead of working for me to make things the way I want them to be. I need to concentrate my prayer life on seeking God’s presence and wisdom to bring me through the storm instead of demanding that he stop it. Do I want “my best life now” instead of praying to my Father, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?” Do I want to be happy when God wants me to be holy? The Father is working to transform me into the image of His Son, and that is a process which involves suffering, self-denial, faith and trial.

What Is Evil?

The sixth century Christian theologian and church leader Augustine of Hippo defined evil as a “privation of the good”— that is, an absence of good, or its reduction in something. Pure evil (if that is possible) would be the complete absence good. Darkness is the absence of light. Death is the absence of life. Nothing is the absence of being. God created everything good. Evil is when the good in something is in some way diminished.

“When, however, a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good. (Augustine, from the Enchiridion)

So, could it be that there is evil in the world due to the absence of a good God? This is not a way to circle back around and say that evil proves God doesn’t exist. He must or nothing else would. And, as I’ve shown, if there’s no God, then there’s no objective good or right either. For a short time there were a small but vocal group of thinkers who proposed God is dead. The idea here is, the creator may have existed, but doesn’t any longer. There are many problems with this idea, not the least of which is that God is self-existent and the sustainer of existence. God cannot die, and without God everything would cease to exist.

However, could God choose not to be present and/or refuse to take any action the world? Deists believe that God is no longer involved with his creation, and probably has little or no concern with our world. I don’t believe we need to go that far in order to recognize that God could elect to remove his manifest presence from the world. Would this limit God’s omnipotence and/or omnipresence? Not at all. God could remain everywhere, but refuse to make his presence felt and known. Most importantly God can choose not to intervene in the world.

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”
(Isaiah 59:1–2, ESV)

Sin separates human beings from God’s presence, even though God continues to surround everything and everyone. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Sin limits us, not God. Sin interferes with our ability to perceive God and enjoy his manifest presence. Sin deprives us of communion and communication with God. In a very real sense every sin reduces good, both in our individual lives and in the world, because it separates us from God, who is good. This is why, although all sin is not equal, all sin is evil because all sin separates us from God’s presence. The absence of God’s manifest presence results in the manifestation of all kinds of evil.

I believe evil is more than a privation, however. Evil is also a perversion of God’s purpose for the world. Over and again in the Bible’s first creation account we read the refrain, “And God saw that it was good.” Then, when God finished creating everything we are told: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Evil is a distortion of God’s design, a disruption of the created order. Let me offer two examples. I would ask you to look past how politically charged each has become. Try to understand how each illustration exemplifies human perversion of God’s purpose and distortion of his design.

God created the earth to renew itself. As an example, humans and animals breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Carbon dioxide can poison us, but plants use it to create energy and life for themselves. They take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and create oxygen as a byproduct through the process of photosynthesis. This is an amazing partnership. Rainforests help control excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which makes up the majority of so-called greenhouse gasses, which most scientists agree contribute to climate change. When human beings wantonly cut down rainforests they are disturbing the amazing balance of God’s design for our environment. The consequences are many and varied.

God created sex, gender and marriage. God designed human beings to be male or female. Sexual immorality of all types is a perversion of God’s design for human intimacy and procreation. Jesus reaffirmed this when he quoted from Genesis account of creation in his teaching about marriage.

“He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”” (Matthew 19:4–6, ESV)

Many people are perverting God’s design in this critical area. Sexual perversion has become more common because many forms have become socially accepted, even celebrated.

Evil is the opposite of good. God is good. Thus, anyone or anything opposed to God would be evil. Anything that perverts God’s purpose and design is evil.

Everybody Has an Agenda

Everybody has an agenda. You can log that somewhere so you’ll remember it. Nobody is just out on a quest to find the truth or follow the evidence wherever it leads. Now, I’m not saying there are none who allow the evidence to convince them contrary to their agenda, but those who permit the evidence to have an influence on their preconceived notions are a rare breed. Most of us have already arrived at a conclusion and hold onto the evidence that supports it, while ignoring, rejecting and forgetting any facts that might seriously test that conclusion (and therefore challenge us).
Let’s take the belief in God as a primary example. There are three types of people when it comes to faith in God: those who believe, those who disbelieve, and those who refuse to make up their mind one way or the other. Now, the final group might at first seem like the ones who would be most apt to seek an answer, but I think it is just as likely that they are just more lazy or indecisive than either theists or atheists. “God? Who can know if God exists or not. I have better things to think about, more important matters to attend to.” So, the agnostic typically has an agenda too: She doesn’t want to be bothered to seek. He is more interested in something else and doesn’t wish to be distracted.
There are atheists who used to be theists–I’ve only encountered former Christians in this category, but I’m sure there are former Muslims, Jews or former believers in polytheist religious ideas as well (Mormonism, Hinduism). Each of these former Christians have a story to tell. Christians would call this a “testimony”. The story follows a pattern: “I was raised in church. I encountered certain evidence against the existence of God, or for evolution, or against the Bible, and since I’m a rational person I don’t believe in God. Faith in God is like belief in fairies or Santa Claus.” However, I often find that the more vocal atheists are not merely logical and intelligent people who just followed the evidence, or failed to find evidence for God, but emotional people (like all people) who are angry with God for one reason or another. Many atheists are not really logical non-believers, but actually anti-theists, or God haters. Richard Dawkins fits this category perfectly. The man hates God. Evolution is his religion (I’m not making a judgment on the validity of evolutionary theory here, but on Dawkins’ fundamentalist devotion to it.) Dawkins famous quote from the God Delusion verifies this. 

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” 
Then there are theists who used to be atheists. My exposure is to Christians who converted from atheism. The two popular authors who exemplify this are Oxford don C. S. Lewis, and the former crime journalist for the Chicago Tribune Lee Strobel. Lewis’s journey is a bit more complex to describe, so I’ll focus on Strobel. His wife had become a Christian, and so he wanted to prove that the Bible or the Christian faith, or, most likely both, were fake. After two years of research, he became a Christian. Now, on the surface this would seem to be one of those rare cases where someone allowed the evidence to change their agenda. Perhaps. However, the fact that Strobel’s wife had become a devout believer had to have been a powerful motivator for him to follow suit. I should hasten to add that that motivation in itself doesn’t invalidate the evidence that Strobel discovered, but it may help us to understand why he accepted that evidence and dismissed the arguments of atheists. Lewis is harder to pin down because his thinking is more complex. In my reading of his work it would seem that the powerful sense that he had that “there must be something beyond this,” that the mythology he loved carried him to a world he desperately wanted to exist, worked as a motivator. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
I am going to give an example of one person for whom I can find no agenda other than “following the evidence wherever it leads,” and that is philosopher Anthony Flew. He was a towering figure among atheists for half a century. He wrote many books espousing and defending atheism. Flew wrote a paper called “Theology and Falsification,” which he first presented at a meeting of the Oxford University Socratic Club in 1950. The chairman of that club was none other than C. S. Lewis. Flew’s paper, which sought to demonstrate the absurdity of theism due to its inability or unwillingness to admit falsifiers, was the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the 20th century. Yet at the end of his life Anthony Flew authored a brief, non-technical book tellingly titled “There Is a God.” When the critics got wind of Flew’s change of mind they assumed what I’ve asserted here” there is an agenda. 

“When reports of my change of mind were spread by the media and the ubiquitous internet, some commentators were quick to claim that my advanced age had something to do with my “conversion.” It has been said that fear concentrates the mind powerfully, and these critics had concluded that expectations of an impending entrance into the afterlife had triggered a deathbed conversion. Clearly these people were familiar with neither my writings on the nonexistence of an afterlife nor with my current views on the topic. For over 50 years I have not only denied the existence of God, but also the existence of an afterlife” (There Is a God, p. 2).

So, if this was not Flew’s motivation or agenda, what was? Well, his father was a minister, and somewhat of a contrarian. Perhaps Flew was following in his father’s footsteps. It should be noted that Flew did not claim to be a Christian. He didn’t even have faith that the God he had come to believe exists may be known at all. Anthony Flew called himself a Deist, which is a theist who believes God created the world and let it run on its own.
As one reads Anthony Flew’s book, There Is a God, however, it does seem that the old philosopher did what he believed he had done his entire life, what I’ve said here that nobody does. He followed the evidence.

“My departure from atheism was not occasioned by an new phenomenon or argument. Over the last two decades my whole framework of thought has been in a state of migration. This was a consequence of my continuing assessment of the evidence of nature. When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: ‘We must follow the argument wherever it leads.'” (There Is a God, p. 89).
I don’t have Flew’s temperament as a scholar or his apparent willingness to continue seeking, but I can admit to my biases, attempt to have insight into my own agenda, and factor those into my research and study of God and the Bible. Perhaps you can do the same? I think we may each aspire to follow the argument and evidence wherever they may lead, even at the expense of an emotional investment into our preconceived notions. Atheists should admit that they either hate God, and/or do not want a God over them telling them what to do. Christians should admit that they need to have a God in control of their chaotic world, and/or deeply desire a father to love them and tell them that they are ok. Admit your bias. Look for your agenda. Are you just trying to prove to everybody that you are right? Are there certain people whom you have something against and seek to prove wrong?
I do believe that the evidence clearly leads to the existence of an unimaginably powerful Being who sustains existence, an incalculably intelligent Mind behind the creation of the universe. I do believe that this Being is capable, willing, and has made efforts to communicate with human beings. I am astounded and appalled at the profound stupidity I see parading as intelligence in our culture. This article was occasioned by an editorial I read in the Washington Post wherein a man advanced what appears to be a growing thesis, that Jesus Christ never existed. Now, it doesn’t bother me than one person, or even a small group, espouse such nonsense. After all, there is also a growing community that believe the earth is flat. As a Christian, someone who worships Jesus Christ as the Son of God, denying his existence is not only ridiculous but deeply offensive because such wide publicity may serve to make the lie more believable by people who would be helped immeasurably by believing in Jesus. It is also infuriating that the editorial came out around Easter. The disrespect shown to Christians by the media demonstrates their agenda. However, I need to put my emotions aside and publicize the evidence, which overwhelmingly supports the existence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Even skeptic Bart Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became the Son of God and similar books, who holds the New Testament to be no more than a collection of human documents, affirms the existence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 
If you dismiss the Jesus of history, you must dismiss antiquity. For example, there is better and more prolific evidence for Jesus Christ’s existence than there is for Alexander the Great. Both of these men changed history. Yet the earliest full biographies we have of Alexander come from 400 years after his life, and they are obviously written by those who are very favorable to the conqueror. The earliest oral tradition, which is recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 dates to within two to five years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Nearly 500 witnesses of the resurrection were still alive at the writing of that Corinthian letter. The Gospels, Jesus’ biographies, date to within 40 years of his life. These are also written by those who favored Jesus; yet they present potentially embarrassing incidents about the followers of Jesus, and even about the first witnesses of his resurrection. It was Jesus’ women followers who were the first to see him alive on that Easter Sunday; their testimony would have been inadmissible in a first century Jewish court because women’s opinions or observations weren’t respected. Even the chosen male disciples intially rejected these women’s testimony. The earliest manuscripts of the New Testament come from the second and third centuries. More importantly, there are more than 5,000 manuscript fragments that date earlier than the fifth century. The manuscripts detailing Alexander’s life by contrast come from the 11th century, over a millennium after his life.
I know my motivation and agenda and try to admit it when I’m looking at evidence, but what could be the agenda of someone who wants to erase Jesus from history? Perhaps the same as that of the atheist, an unwillingness to believe in God and Jesus is the Son of God, or perhaps it has become trendy and these pseudo-historians are looking for attention, or they are inveterate contrarians who must always be against something in order to have a sense of meaning. Dan Brown in his DaVinci Code novel seems to have been of the final type, in that he wanted to shock readers with the news that Jesus was really a feminist who wanted to turn the church over to his wife! Anything to sell a book. I see something more insidious than commerce at work here, however. There is a concerted effort among many in the media, big business, and especially the academic community, to oppose Christianity. They want to change the Christian worldview. Indeed, they have been quite successful. Although our calendar still has Christmas and Easter, fewer young people than ever know what these holidays are supposed to celebrate. Near Easter of this year our youth minister asked a group of teenagers what Good Friday meant; none of them knew.
There is an agenda in the media, in academia and in big business. It is to recreate our culture and remove the Christian basis of a previous era. However, our most cherished values are being destroyed in the process: life, liberty and the pursuit of deep and meaningful happiness.

Are Christians Becoming Stupid?

“Let anyone with ears to hear listen! And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’”

(Mark 4:23-25)

Not all Christians are stupid, and I do not use the term in a derogatory way. I use it advisedly to both get your attention, and to point out that many who would claim the name Christian, who once accepted the truth of the Bible and sought to live accordingly, have now willfully chosen to eschew that knowledge in favor of many opposing views. They could hear, but have now chosen not to pay attention.

Ignorant refers to someone who simply doesn’t know, or know any better. Stupid refers to someone who knows better than, say, to do something, but charges headlong into doing it anyhow. Stupid is someone who knows the truth that sets them free and remains instead a slave. Increasing numbers of Christians are in this position because they have chosen to be shaped by a post-Christian culture instead of having minds transformed by paying attention to and applying the truth of the living and active Word of God.

Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get…

I wrote the next two paragraphs like a journal entry when I encountered Jesus words about paying attention to what you hear. You see, I need to get this.

Measure you give = how much I pay attention to the Word being spoken. Measure you get = how much truth I receive and retain. I don’t want to be like those “who are always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

When I listen, focus, pay attention to the Word being communicated through the Scripture by the Holy Spirit, or the internal witness or conviction of the Spirit about some issue, then I will realize the truth being communicated. I will receive knowledge. Then I will act on the truth. If I do this, then I will retain what I’ve learned (remember it) and remain active in it (continue to act upon it), and I will be in position and privileged to receive more truth from the Lord. If I fail to pay attention, to believe in and act upon the truth the Holy Spirit is teaching, then I will not be given anything more. Not only that, what I’ve already learned will begin to leech away until I have nothing. I must live out what I’ve learned, and keep learning more. I must move upward and go forward and grow and change into the image of Christ, or I will fall backward and become more and more like a fallen man, who “fades into the light of common day.”

I think some of you need to understand this too…

Jesus told parables. These are “earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.” In relating the reason he spoke in parables, this master teacher indicated it was in order to hide the truth from the uninitiated and those unwilling to change (see Mark 4:10-12). He explained his parables to the followers he chose. The beauty of Jesus’ parables is, they are memorable and tangible and may be recalled by anyone who has heard them even once. However, the meaning is not obvious; it requires an instructed mind, a mind taught by the Holy Spirit. This represents the Lord hiding the Truth in plain sight. The genius of the parables is, the truth remains locked up inside them ready to be revealed when the person who has heard decides to pay attention. “For him who has ears to hear, let him hear,” is a command Jesus appended to many of his parables and other teaching. It is like a zip file on a computer: that small file contains a compressed information which must be unzipped, or decompressed, in order to be understood by a user. A parable of Jesus, like that zip file, is stored in the memory of someone who has heard it. When once that person is ready to pay attention to the Holy Spirit, who is trying to speak to them and transform them, there comes a moment of serendipity (an Aha! moment) when they realize the truth (like “the moral of the story”).

Truth demands a response, a parable containing truth does not. The more people hear Truth and refuse to accept it, the harder their hearts become to it. Jesus was encountering opposition and hardening hearts when he began to use parables. Eventually, the truth must be told explicitly, without figures of speech and stories (see John 16:19-33), and the Spirit of Truth will make it plain to those who are paying attention. Are you paying attention?

If you pay attention and receive what you hear by faith, then you will learn and grow. You will be entrusted with more truth and more knowledge of God and His Word. If you do not, then even what you once had will be taken away from you. You may well fall into a horrible state of disbelief, and, well, stupidity regarding God and the Bible. You may come to a point of no return, a place where you seek to repent but cannot change your heart and mind back to the simplicity of trust in Jesus and belief in the Bible as God’s holy Word. It is pointless for me to warn anyone who has already come to such a point. Such a person will scoff, discount, ignore or argue against such a warning. I am speaking to someone who has yet to turn away, but may be tempted.

If you are being tested today, if you feel like turning away, I say come back home. Return to the beginning of your faith journey. You’ve become to wise in your own eyes. You don’t know what you think you do. The truth hasn’t changed. Jesus is the same and His love is never ending. Return to the place where you began to stray. Do what you refused to do back then. Go back to the place where you began to do what you still know is wrong, and repent. Change your thinking and change your ways, while you still can. “Night is coming when no man can work,” and no more change may be made.

Here’s a final warning from Scripture. Heed it, and don’t be stupid.

“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.” (Hebrews 6:4-6)

 If you