The Reason For God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Greetings All!

     Today I bring you a selection from Tim Keller's best-selling book "The Reason For God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism."  If you have not read it, you have missed out on some very wise and convincing arguments for the Christian faith.  Many people have what we could call their "pat objections" for why they reject the Christian faith.  "There can't be just one true religion."  "How could a good God allow suffering."  "Science has disproved Christianity."   "How could a loving God send people to hell?"

     Keller takes on such objections and offers many well-reasoned responses to them.  In an age where people often tend to do little more choose a view that fits with their personal preferences (whether they've thought it through or not), Keller offers us some very logical and well-thought-through alternative perspectives, which challenge such pat objections to the core.  If you really want to be challenged to reconsider many issues from a fresh perspective, you will want to pick up a copy. For to miss out on this book is to miss out on an apologetic treat similar to that of reading C. S. Lewis, Os Guinness, Ravi Zacharias, and others.

       Our particular "thought" for today addresses the objection voiced by people who say, "I can't believe in Christianity because I believe in a God of love."  Enjoy.

I believe in a God of Love

       "During my college years and my early twenties, I, like so many others, questioned the Christian faith I was raised in. There were subjective reasons for my doubts. Christianity just didn't seem real to me experientially. I had not developed a prayer life and had never experienced God personally.  There were also intellectual problems I was having with Christianity, all of which I address elsewhere in this book. There was one, however, I will talk about here.  I was troubled by those Christians who stressed hellfire and damnation. Like so many of my generation I believed that if there was a core to all religions, it was a loving God. I wanted to believe in a God of love who accepted people regardless of their beliefs and practices.  So I began to take courses in the other major religions of the world -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, and Judaism.  I have profited to this day from those studies. However, my explorations in other faiths proved me wrong on this particular point about the centrality of a loving God.

       I found no other religious text outside the Bible that said God created the world out of love and delight. Most ancient pagan religions believed the world was created through struggles and violent battles between opposing gods and supernatural forces. I turned to look more closely at Buddhism, the religion I liked the best at the time. However, despite its great emphasis on selflessness and detached service to others, Buddhism did not believe in a personal God at all, and love is the action of a person.

         Later on, after I become a minister, I was a speaker and panelist for several years in a monthly discussion program in Philadelphia between a Christian church and a mosque. Each month a speaker from the church and a speaker from the mosque would give a Biblical and Qu'ranic perspective on the topic. When we covered the topic of God's love, it was striking how different our conceptions were. I was told repeatedly by Muslim speakers that God was indeed loving in the sense of being merciful and kind to us. But when Christians spoke of the Lord as our Spouse, of knowing God intimately and personally, and of having powerful effusions of his love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, our Muslim friends balked. They told us that it was disrespectful, in their view, to speak of anyone knowing God personally.

       Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can't believe in the God of the Bible who punishes and judges people, because they "believe in a God of Love."  I now ask, what makes them think God is love?  Can they look at life in the world today and say, "This proves that the God of the world is a God of love?"  Can they look at history and say, "This all shows that the God of history is a God of love?"  Can they look at the religious texts of the world and conclude that God is a God of love?  By no means is that the dominant, ruling attribute of God as understood in any of the major faiths. I must conclude that the source of the idea that God is Love is the Bible itself. And the Bible tells us that the God of love is also a God of judgment who will put all things in the world right in the end.

       The belief in a God of pure love -- who accepts and judges no one -- is a powerful act of faith.  Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical, religious textual support for it outside of Christianity.  The more one looks at it, the less justified [this objection] appears."

       Though many today will say, "all religions basically teach the same thing," all it takes is actually reading their religious texts to see that this is not so, as Keller, who has read them testifies.  In fact, when it comes to the issue of love, the Bible separates itself even further from the others by not only speaking of the love of God frequently, but even going as far as to declare that "God IS love" (I John 4:16).  God is not just loving, He is love.  In this regard as well, no other religion comes close.

       What many in western society today fail to see (disconnected as we are becoming from our past) is that our culture was influenced for two millennia by Christian thought and practice.  And, therefore, scores of the virtues that have come to be the rallying cry of our secular society, are not virtues our secular culture developed on it's own, but virtues our culture borrowed (or stole) from Christianity, washed of their rooting in Christianity, and tried to claim as their own.

       It's what could (or should) be called, cultural plagiarism -- with no credit given to the original author of those virtues.  Or as one friend put it, our culture has borrowed "lumber" it removed from the structural framework of the house called Christianity, but washed of all it's Christian moorings and meaning, and then made to fit a secularized ideal.  Other cultures stress honor and shame, compliance and conformity, obedience and punishment.  But in a culture influenced for many centuries by the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the redemption that came to us through the sacrifice of Himself for those who didn't deserve it; a culture influenced by the truth that love is the greatest of all gifts (I Corinthians 13), and that God himself is love (as His disciples alone declared), it is quite impossible for love not to be seen the queen of virtues.

In the Bonds of Christian Affection, Pastor Jeff

Desiring God Daily Devotional

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from a familiar source -- John Piper.  It's from his "Desiring God Daily Devotional" selection for June 16, 2013.
     As I have mentioned before, his book "Desiring God" is already (in my opinion) a spiritual classic, and a read that helped me immensely in my own walk with the Lord.
     I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to read a deep, well-reasoned, spiritually informative, personally formative and biblically-based summary of the Christian faith and life. Should one have adopted the erroneous notion that one cannot be intellectual, academic or highly intelligent and Christian at the same time, this book (along with any by C. S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, Os Guinness and others) will quickly disabuse you of that false notion.
     This selection has to do with correct and incorrect notions of God, and our responses to God in relation to them.  To heed Piper's words in this selection could save many a well-meaning Christian much fruitless effort and lead to far more praise and glory being given to God.  Enjoy.

"So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him."

(2 Corinthians 5:9)

     "What if you discovered (like the Pharisees did), that you had devoted your whole life to trying to please God, but all the while had been doing things that in God’s sight were abominations (Luke 16:14–15)?

     Someone may say, “I don’t think that’s possible; God wouldn't reject a person who has been trying to please him.” But do you see what this questioner has done? He has based his conviction about what would please God on his idea of what God is like. That is precisely why we must begin with the character of God.

     God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket brigade.

     If you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell people what you've found.

     My hope as a desperate sinner hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer — my thirst. That is why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace."

     Piper's words mimic in an identical fashion the idea conveyed to us by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 46:1-4.  Read that passage, and contemplate what he's saying, and you will find yourself thanking God that you don't worship an idol (or a god) that needs you to serve it, but a God who is so infinitely adequate and self-complete that He offers to serve you instead of needing you (as with the idol's Bel and Nebo in Isaiah 46) to habitually serve them.

     Bel and Nebo were huge carved stone statues that had to be carried on carts (sometimes hundreds of miles) into battle by the soldiers. Picture it.  Their need to be "carried" made it exhausting to "serve" them, while the God of the Bible, out of the inexhaustible riches of who He is, offers instead to "carry" us.

Grateful we serve a God who is like a self-replenishing spring!  In Him, Pastor Jeff 

Resisting Temptation

Greetings All,

Today's 'thought' comes to you from Ravi Zacharias, and is found in his book: "Cries of the Heart." It has to do with the lure of illicit pleasure, the human proclivity toward immediate gratification, and the choice between giving in to the call of sinful pleasure or resisiting it.

Nothing is more sure in our world today than the fact that we will all face temptation, which will confront us in the form of choices -- day in and day out for the rest of our lives. In fact, there are people who make it their life's work to tempt you since it pays off monetarily for them if they do. And thus they will not relent. If one scheme doesn't work, they will dream up another, and another, and another, until they find a way to wear you down. Their livelihood depends on it!

This means that resisting temptation will never be a one time thing. It must become the ongoing, life-long determination of the Spirit-birthed soul. It must become the personal and habitual resolve of anyone whose goal is to live for God, and thus live a godly life. Zacharias is right -- too many people give up too easily in the fight against temptation.

Living for pleasure and immediate gratification is to be expected among people without a view toward eternity. If this life is all there is, and nothing more, then hedonism makes sense (I Cor. 15:32). Unfortunately, this same attitude is also far too common among those who claim to believe in eternity and belong to Christ. Zacharias' words, therefore, are well worth our consideration. Enjoy.

"Turning aside from immediate gratification is one of the most difficult things to do. But this is where the battle is often won or lost. In blunt terms we are called upon to be strong in our wills at resisting illicit pleasures.

As a rule, many have so surrendered their wills to a state of weakness that they have lost sight of their capacity for strength. It is far better, goes the old adage, to shun the bait than to struggle in the snare. Learn to say 'no' and to mean it -- not just for the sake of saying no, but because life has been defined for its ultimate purpose (that of living to the honor of the God who has created us). If we do not resist and instead go the easy way of succumbing, there will be a price to be paid some day.

During the Vietnam war, one of its heroes was an American soldier by the name of Lance Sijan. Today, a dormitory at the Air Force Academy in Colorado is named after him... On November 9, 1967, Sijan was flying an F-4 on his fifty-third combat mission, when, owing to a faulty fuse that triggered an explosion in his aircraft, he crashed on the border of Laos. He could have been rescued as his comrades flew near looking for him. But he lay low, and did not draw them to his spot, because the enemy was too close and he did not want his companions to risk their lives. Over the next forty-five days, he crawled three miles. He tried to survive on leaves and the bark of trees. Finally caught and put into solitary confinement, he was tortured to extract secrets. Those who could overhear what was happening ached for him deeply, but they were proud beyond measure at his unbreakable will and his determination not to betray his trust. There was nothing his tormentors could do to dent his courage and his commitment to his country. Such is the material of which true heros are made.

If it is possible for men and women to serve their country with such unyielding honor, can we not also serve the Lord our God with a will that resists fleeting and illicit pleasures? In fact, in the thirty-fifth chapter of Jeremiah God raises this very question. He asks His people to take note of the discipline some show to earthly causes. How much more ought we to be unflinching in our commitment to God Himself.

The well-known talk-show counselor Laura Schlesinger, responding to a male caller who claimed he had an addiction to a certain lifestyle, bluntly restated his problem. 'It's not an addiction problem you have,' she told him. 'It is a character problem.' None of us like to hear that, but it is the strength of our will to serve Him that reveals the character we possess."

To his last thought we might also add: It is the strength of our love for Christ that determines the degree to which we attempt to resist temptation. For if we are all too quick to give into the sin God calls us to resist, we must honestly ask ourselves if we truly love Him, since in the end, our devotion and commitment and determination to resist sin are very much tied into the degree of love we have for Christ (John 15:7-15). Loves solidifies our resolve. It heightens our determination. It determines our priorities. Love finds reasons to be faithful, while a lack of love looks for and settles for excuses not to be.

Ravi is right: If only Christians could love and honor their God, and be as determined not to betray Him, as that soldier was not to betray his friends and his country. A few such souls would be an inspration to us all.

Along the same lines I once listened to a man who spoke on this same topic of "character." I don't remember his name, or anything else he said, except this one statement: "A person's character is not defined by what he does when others are watching, but by what he does when he knows no one will ever find out."

He was right. True character is a matter of one's heart, and will, and resolve, when they know they will never be found out by any other human being. Or maybe we could say, when they know that the only audience they will ever be seen by is the ever-present audience of One.

In absolute dependence upon His grace, which for His honor will strengthen us for the battle against temptation,

Pastor Jeff

He Cares

Greetings

This week's 'thought' comes from Ravi Zacharias and is found in his book "Cries of the Heart - Bringing God Near When He Feels So Far." One of his other books, "Can Man Live Without God" (lectures delivered at Harvard University and later put into book form) is one of the most compelling and profound arguments for the existence of God that I have ever read. In our secularized and semi-atheistic society it is well worth whatever time it takes you to read it! You can also hear broadcasts of his radio program "Let My People Think" on over 550 radio stations worldwide.

Ravi was born in India. He was descended from a line of Hindu priests (of the Nambudiri Brahmin caste). At one point a German priest spoke to one of his ancestors about Christianity and the family was converted and embraced the Christian faith. At that point they changed the family name from Nambudiri to Zacharias. Though Ravi grew up in a nominal Anglican home, he was himself an atheist until the age of 17. Our thought for today picks up at that point! Enjoy.

"Many make the assumption that God is unknowable or too distant. The Scriptures remind us that God has graciously invited us to come to Him on a personal level. He reaches out to every man, woman and child and says: 'Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest' (Matt. 11:28).

I very seldom like to mention the turning point of my own life, for it is a very private matter and sometimes still hurts to think of it, to say nothing of the embarrassment it must bring to my family... I was seventeen years old when, with neither great intensity or great anguish, I came to the recognition that life had very little meaning. The more I pondered its harsh implication the closer I drew to a decision. That decision was to choose the way of suicide.

I found myself after that attempt lying in a hospital bed, having expelled all the poison that I had taken but unsure if I would recover. There on that bed, with a dehydrated body, the Scriptures were read to me. The flooding of my heart with the news that Jesus Christ could come into my life and that I could know God personally defies the depths to which the truth overwhelmed me. In that moment, with a simple prayer of trust, the change from a desperate heart to one that found the fullness of meaning became a reality for me.

God reached down to a teenager in a hospital bed in the city of New Delhi, a mega-city of teeming millions. Imagine! God cared enough to hear my cry. How incredible that He has a personal interest in the struggles of our lives. I cannot express it better than to say that His self-sufficiency and greatness do not deny us the wonderful joy of being affirmed in our individuality and of knowing that we are of unique value to Him. That was the point of the parable Jesus told about the shepherd who left the ninety-nine sheep in the fold and went looking for the one. The breadth of the gospel in its implications for history and for all of humanity ought never to diminish the personal application of it... God is not just the God of power in creation; He is the God of presence in our affliction."

The immense power, greatness and majesty of God does not (as the Deist asserted) make Him distant. Just the opposite is true. God can be near to us all precisely because He is so infinitely immense and great! If we think or feel otherwise, then it is not because our understanding or view of God is too great, but as J. B. Phillips put it, because "Your God is too Small."

In the Bonds of Christian Charity,

Pastor Jeff