Divine whispers

C.S. Lewis once commented that "God whispers to us in our joys, speaks to us in our conscience, and shouts to us in our pain." Lately, I've come to realize just how pervasive (and wonderful) these divine whispers are in our various experiences of pleasure throughout our lives. Even our sinful pleasures are but a pale and twisted shadow of all that is good within God's good world. God is a God of joy and a God of pleasure. God invented your favorite ice cream. He also invented the orgasm (scandalous, but true!).

Those otherworldly, enchanting, and otherwise satisfying feelings that I get when I listen to a good song or when I watch a good movie are reflections of the divine beauty. It's almost as if the better songs have managed to borrow just that much more from God's storehouse of good gifts. But what's perhaps most intriguing is how ultimate satisfaction cannot be found in the pleasures of this world. The second we make temporal pleasures ultimate is the second they lose their joyful veneer. The more directly we set our sights on temporal pleasures, the less we are able to enjoy them. They're only sustainable on other terms, terms that are set by One from another world altogether.

Paradoxically, the more we set our sights on eternal things, the more we are enabled to enjoy the things of this world in their proper place. It's almost as if the optimal amount of pleasure can only obtained if we let God reign in our lives according to His great wisdom and love. It took me years to finally peel my hands off of the things of this world and thereby empty my hands before a gracious God who delights to give gifts to His creatures. I didn't want to commit my life fully to God because I was afraid that it meant I would have to give up any shred of happiness and joy that I had in my otherwise depressed existence. But I was wrong. The source of our misery is precisely the result of our making temporal things ultimate and absolute in our vain attempts to arrive at happiness and fulfillment on our own terms. If you try to enjoy temporal things directly apart from a relationship with God, their sustained enjoyment ultimately eludes you. It's like trying to keep soap from slipping out of your hands by squeezing more tightly. Counter-intuitive? Yes, but equally true.

When I finally let go - when I finally lost my life, as it were, I immediately gained it, just as Christ promises. Suddenly I discovered that there's a striking continuity between the good things of this world and the goodness of God. Only when we give it all to God are we finally in a place to receive it in the manner we should have received it in the first place: as wonderful gifts from a gracious God. The grace of God is ever-present; His whispers are so numerous that we tend to mistake them for a colorless hum in the background of our lives. If we would only listen, we would hear them. God whispers to us in our pleasures. Listen, receive, and give thanks.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17)

"For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer." (1 Tim 4:4-5)

"Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matt 6:33)

Longing

I don't feel very expositional today, so I'm gonna relate my feelings (I'm sure I'll end up being annoyingly systematic anyway). I'm usually hesitant to be so revealing, but I'm learning not to care.

I have experienced a certain something all of my life that I can barely put my finger on. The best word I can think of to describe it is longing. I have longed for something throughout my entire life. I have longed for love, for joy, for peace, for ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment - but it's almost as if it has always hovered just beyond my grasp.

I cried at my junior high school, high school, and college graduations. Not only was I sad to part with friends, but I was also sad for a deeper reason that I can't really explain. It almost felt like I missed out on something - that I didn't make the best of what I had, that I failed to seize and overtake what my heart longs for...even though I have no idea how to put into words that certain "something" that I have pined after since I can remember. What is it that I want so badly but cannot even describe? I have always been insufficient to obtain it - and maybe that's how I'm supposed to feel.

I love movies and music because they tend to capture something about the way life should be: it should be ideal, it should be perfect, it should be romantic, it should be peaceful, it should be full of joy, it should be exuberant and pulsating with vitality. Even the cheesiest romantic comedy has something undeniably endearing about it, something that I want, something incredibly good. My heart swells and is poignantly reminded about precisely that thing that I so long for, that ever-present reality that dances wistfully around our lives.

I'm convinced that everything in my life that has radiated with such glory has done so because it reflects the beauty of God. Cool summer nights, a beautiful sunset, a couple falling in love, children smiling, a home-cooked meal from mom, the tenderness of a father tucking in his child after having a bad dream, a breathtaking skyline, a newly married couple becoming one flesh in mystical union, a dog cuddling up beside you on your bed, moments of musical rapture, an insane rock show, bonding with your friends while you play silly video games - the tears of Jesus at the death of Lazarus, a broken sinner kneeling down before the cross of Jesus Christ to receive all that God has for him, the warmth that fills the room of grateful worshipers of the Holy One...the list goes on, and it all makes me weep. I cry because I have had a real taste of God's goodness through His Holy Spirit, a taste that was in a real sense the first fruits of the culmination of my longing; but at the same time I feel the tensions within me and the longing for the fullness of that goodness.

If it isn't evident by now, I'm something of a sentimental guy, to say the least. Falling in love has always been a deep desire of mine, though I have only come to realize recently that the love of God has to be realized first in order to make any other love even possible. So what is this longing? Why are so many experiences in my life outlined by this "je ne sais qua" in such a way that is able to be perceived but unable to be obtained? What could it be but hints of the God of holy love, morsels of divine goodness? Would not such a God so draw us - with an ever tender and gracious hand, never forcing but always evoking?

John Wesley on Calvinism

"Answer all [the Calvinists'] objections, as occasion offers, both in public and private. But take care to do this with all possible sweetness both of look and of accent...Make it a matter of constant and earnest prayer, that God would stop the plague."

Gotta love Wesley =)

Biblical love and Calvinism

Biblical love is agape. Agape is not just coldly doing good to someone else out of a Kantian sense of "duty" even though deep down you detest them as persons. Agape is a disposition of the heart such that you simply desire to see people happy (fulfilled according to their capacities), delight in their happiness, and regret their unhappiness. You may hate the evil they do, but nevertheless you truly desire their ultimate wellbeing from your heart, and thus you do good to them so they may come to repentance. Jesus demonstrates agape when He weeps over Jerusalem's impenitence, and God displays agape when the heavens rejoice at the repentance of one sinner. This is agape, the very nature of the God who is love.

Now obviously, in Calvinism, God does not love the reprobate, for He causally determines for them to be eternally miserable. That much is clear and shouldn't be controversial for anyone who just looks at the facts. But in my opinion, the God of Calvinism also does not truly love the elect. Here's why.

The bedrock of Calvinist theology is unconditional election. God is utterly free to elect whomever He so chooses for salvation. He by no means had to choose those specific individuals that He chose. There was no necessity in His choosing those particular individuals He chose, and it was a live possibility for Him to choose other people. He may have arbitrarily decided to put you in the damnation column rather than the salvation column. His choice was not determined. This isn't a bare hypothetical for Calvinism; it's a logically possible option for God - or else why stress divine freedom so strenuously?

Now, if that's the case, how is it coherent to say that, at the very same time, God simply delights in the happiness of the elect as an end itself, but that He would also be willing to damn them for all eternity? How can Calvinists wax eloquently about God's eternal love for the elect (which they do ad nauseum, as if it were a romance) if He truly could have chosen other people with the drop of a hat? If you deny that He could, then you are denying unconditional election, and thus Calvinism. God cannot necessarily love that specific group of people, or else He does not truly sovereignly choose them. Nor can you say that God simply desires the happiness of those particular people, for that only makes sense if it springs out of His loving character, and if that's why He loves them, He'd love all. God is either (1) not willing to damn the elect because he necessarily loves that particular group of individuals and thus simply desires their happiness such that He would never eternally harm them (which explodes divine freedom with respect to choosing arbitrarily and contingently who is saved and who is damned), or else (2) he actually saves them for a different motive than desiring their happiness (displaying His glory - consistent Calvinism ala Piper) and thus wouldn't mind damning them, which denies His love for them. God cannot both be willing to damn you (unconditional election / divine freedom) and also be of such a disposition that He mourns when you are unhappy (agape). The two are mutually exclusive.

The only way I can envision a Calvinist to get out of this conundrum is to say that God somehow chooses to desire the happiness of the elect as an end, which is unintelligible if you really reflect upon it. What motivates God to choose to be motivated by His delight in the happiness of a certain group of people? What disposition prompts Him to change His disposition? See the absurdity inherent in this move if God is to have a consistent nature? What would be the desire behind God choosing to have loving desires for the elect? What motivates God's choice to change His motivation (these questions show how crazy this idea is)? It can't be love, because then we are back to square one in tossing out unconditional election. Choices themselves flow out of dispositions. How can God be both a loving and a hateful person at the very same time? That's logically impossible, since agape by its very definition is unconditional positive regard for all persons, whether persons of the Trinity or human persons who have a God-capacity to receive and give love (imago Dei). He would either cease to be loving, and thus would hate everybody, or else He would continue being loving and love everybody (see the father example below).

This whole defense is absurd because it presumes that God can actually change the divine character at a whim, which is unscriptural (and kind of insane, as the above convolutions show). God cannot deny Himself; He is always faithful. His character is fixed, of that we are assured. But in Calvinism, it seems like God's very character is fundamentally arbitrary; God's actions don't flow out of a fixed character with a fixed set of desires, wants, and dispositions. If God can change His very essence (even into a split-essence in terms of loving some and hating others), one wonders what is stopping Him from doing anything at all. Will He choose to love sin at some point? Most pointedly, will He choose to stop desiring the happiness of the elect in the future? What would be stopping Him? Certainly not a consistent divine character of holy love! The bottom line is that you don't choose to have desires/dispositions; that's not a coherent notion. Rather, your desires/dispositions (which flow out of your character) prompt and delimit your choices. All choices presuppose a motive or disposition, and therefore a character, behind them in the first place! To choose to eternally harm even one person, God would first have to cease being a loving person in the agape sense, which would mean He wouldn't love anyone. Love is by definition a desire to see all persons happy as an end that delights the person loving. Choices must flow out of character/dispositions. Perhaps a Calvinist who wants to affirm 1) God's genuine heartfelt love for the elect and 2) His sovereign choice to elect or not elect them is to give God the ability to alter arbitrarily the divine nature into a split personality and then just arbitrarily stick with it. But even then, the one personality that possesses agape would necessarily love all persons! As I have said before, Calvinism reduces God to a Being whose only real attribute is divine freedom.

Those Calvinists who say that "loving" the elect (which is really not agape, since it does not spring from a disposition that delights in the happiness of persons, though He may arbitrarily promote their well being to a degree) is really just a way for God to "love" Himself (read: revel in His "glorious" ability to determine people to be saved) are far more consistent when they say God's saving activity are really just a means to His more deep and fundamental desire to display His glory. At least such Calvinists have a God with one consistent disposition/character. He is "passionately motivated to display His glory" (whatever that means), and it just so happens that to save some people - and not necessarily those who He happened to choose! - is part of that plan. But again, if that's true, it's hard to see how God is truly disposed to desire the happiness of the elect.

A father who has it within his power to save both children from drowning but only saves one is not a loving father - for a loving father by definition would clearly save both if that lay within his power. He is not even partly loving; he's not loving at all. It couldn't be love that motivated him to save the one child, for there is absolutely no reason why that same agape love from the heart of a father who is loving wouldn't motivate him to save the other as well if that were in His power (unless suddenly he becomes a hateful person after saving the first one!). The motivation must be something else. As the Westminister Confession states:

The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures (there's the real motive), to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.

While I'm at it, we need to distinguish 1) God's actions manifesting His character of holy love and therefore inevitably redounding to His glory (Arminianism, and the Bible) 2) God being motivated by the display of His glory, even if it's at the expense of most of His creatures (Calvinism). What in the world does it even mean to be "motivated by the display of your glory?" To have an insatiable desire to show off? To flex your muscles? Why would God need to be motivated to display His glory as an end if His actions, which manifest the divine character of holy love, are already glorious and so redound to His glory? It is, again, unintelligible, not to mention unbiblical.

It is precisely because God is not self-seeking but is rather self-giving that His actions redound to His glory. Nor can it be argued by Calvinists that God should be motivated to display His own glory because of how great He is precisely because seeking to display your own so-called "glory" and "greatness" at the expense of others fails to display true glory and greatness. Rather, God's glory and greatness is found in His other-directed love:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5-11)

This other-directed attitude, this self-giving love, this lack of being motivated by the display of His own glory (not seeking equality with God something to be grasped, but rather being humble to death out of His great love) is precisely what redounds to the glory of God the Father.

Trials

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4).

Faith and Reason revisited

Here are some random thoughts and convictions of mine that I'm trying to fit into a model of the relationship between faith and reason.

1) a necessary condition of truth is coherency
2) the truths of the Christian faith will never go against critical reason when it's functioning at its best (i.e. it will not appear eternally irrational to us)
3) Faith is trust in God and confidence in His promises, believing against all hope, ceasing to trust in your own futile attempts, and holding the firm conviction that God will deliver and pull through for you
4) Belief seems to be involuntary. Our beliefs are usually thrust upon us, even our belief that God exists. For those who hear the gospel with an open heart, I think its truth is also pressed upon the hearers. There is a ring of truth to the scriptures and to the teachings of Jesus such that we see it as true if our hearts are willing to do God's will (John 7:17).
5) Even faith, to some degree, is not something we just choose to have whenever we want to have it. In some sense it's a gift that must be pursued as we respond to the grace of God at hand. It seems that as we follow that still small voice of Holy Spirit, we are brought to a place where there's nothing left to do but trust in God and place our confidence in Him. In such a moment of self-surrender, we almost passively receive the grace of God, and are justified.
6) There are degrees of faith as we respond to God's progressive revelation to us. But saving faith is special, it is faith in Jesus, in His cross, in His sufficiency and work, in His promises to save us from our sin.
7) We cannot come to know that Christianity is true unless we participate and cooperate with God's gracious revelation to us in the various aspects of our lives. This may include rational argumentation, but it also includes revelation in nature, conscience, and scripture. Seeing other Christians may also produce in us beliefs that they are exhibiting the character of the Holy One - for those who are open to see such beliefs
8) We must be able to doubt God's promises for trust in God to be meaningful before God. We are held accountable for putting our confidence in His promises or refusing to do so. I'm not sure if I'm willing to call such a faith intrinsically worthy. It seems to be only as efficacious and worthy as its object. But then again, God seems to be pleased with and even praise those who have faith - not because faith is a human achievement, but because it is the utter absence of such an attitude. This faith is not formed by love; it can be had by sinners who trust Christ with simple faith and are thereby delivered. Now as a fruit of justifying faith that connects the believer with God, love is inevitable. But faith precedes love both chronologically and even metaphysically, since we cannot love God and neighbor without that faith connection to God. So is the attitude of faith praiseworthy? It seems so, but why? Perhaps precisely because the believer ascribes no ability to himself to autonomously achieve the good, but to God's power alone?
9) Sin can blind us to God's truth. It degrades our minds and deceitfully causes self-deception.
10) Scripture seems to use both evidence and beliefs in a basic sense.
11) Faith is not blind, but usually has at least some reason behind it, however minimal
12) Yet, sometimes, perhaps often, people act mostly on hope, thinking that if they are to be eternally happy, the only place it can come from is from God. So, the person cries out in insufficiency to God, and He hears that cry and saves mightily.
13) Sitting back in a non-participatory way and reasoning critically can be a cover up for sinful autonomy from God
14) Critical reason alone is usually the wrong posture before an evoking, calling God. It leaves humans at the center, which is the essence of sin
15) God does not accept you on the basis of what you do at all, even the love that you do after you are saved. He accepts you solely on the basis of your confidence and trust in Him. That is credited to you as righteousness.

By grace alone through faith alone

The biblical message of by grace alone through faith alone is vitally important because it highlights the utter need of human beings and the complete sufficiency of God's grace. On this issue, like Wesley, I am a "hair's breadth" from Calvinism. By virtue of the Fall, humans have "unplugged" themselves from God, the source of all life, holiness, and love. As a result of this alienation from God, humans find themselves with a self-curvature that infects every level of their character. Instead of looking to God to provide for us and give us what we need, we find ourselves trying to navigate and manage our lives and our relationships with others using our own power and wisdom, a project that is as tiresome as it is futile. Whoever authored the famous quip "no rest for the wicked" certainly hit on a profound truth. The consequences of broken relationship with God are disastrous, a truth to which centuries of human wickedness and misery overwhelmingly attest (Romans 1-2).

Spiritually separated from God, humans quickly fall prey to the power of sin and become enslaved to it. The opposite of sin, as Kirkegaard once aptly remarked, is not virtue, but faith. Why? Because the very source of sin is unbelief, a lack of trust in God. The original sin in the garden was unbelief; Adam and Eve did not trust that God had what was best in mind for them. They thought He was holding out on them, and so they ceased trusting God and ate the one thing God forbade them to eat, and wouldn't you know it, misery was the result. Those who cease relying upon God and trusting in Him open themselves up to a world of sin, misery, and death. Once the connection with the source of holy love is broken, we can't help but be depraved. What's worse, when we read the teachings of Jesus about true righteousness that ring undeniably true, the demands of the gospel and of obedience to God through love for which we will be judged seem utterly impossible for fallen men to meet - and they are. They should drive you to a point where you commit all that you are into the hands of Christ to lift you out of the mire and set you on your feet.

This is precisely why salvation must be by grace alone through faith alone. This goes against nearly everything fallen humans are inclined to think; we naturally believe that we need to do or be something to be set right or to establish our own righteousness, though I think deep down we all know there's something seriously wrong with our various attempts at being counted righteous in God's court by our own pride-filled human achievements. Any works that we do to assert our own fanciful "righteousness" in this state of sin really just amount to boasting and self-aggrandizement. They are human efforts to turn righteousness into a human achievement, efforts that really amount to self-justification, sinful autonomy, and vain boasting - but not before God (Rom 4:2). Our tendency is to stay in the driver's seat of our lives and be the captain of our own souls. We want selfish autonomy. The idea of submitting our lives to the rule of another, even if that other is wholly good (which He is!), is anathema to us. There's an active resistance in our souls to the idea of throwing in the towel, getting on our knees, and handing our life over to God - a resistance that the Scriptures simply call sin (Romans 3, Romans 7).

The only way we can be set right with God/ justified before God / reconciled with God is through faith alone. What else do we bring to the table? You contribute nothing to your justification. Enslaved to the power of sin and guilty in God's court, we can do nothing but trust solely in the merits and work of Jesus Christ on the cross to redeem us from both the power and the guilt of sin. We must come to a place where we are willing to step out of the driver's seat and into the backseat. We must repent and believe the gospel. Only when we "dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name" will our faith be credited as righteousness before God. God can and does justify the ungodly, but He will only do it on the basis of your faith and His grace. Will you look beyond yourself to Jesus and be saved by faith?

Not only is our peaceful relationship with God restored and the enmity between Him and us (and the wrath that results) removed in terms of our positional and juridical stance in God's court through the blood of Jesus, but we are also born again when we entrust ourselves to Jesus in the self-surrender of faith. We are given the Holy Spirit through which we cry "Abba Father" and who breaks the power of sin over us and empowers us to live a life of holy love and obedience (Romans 5, Romans 8). Now, as Christ works in and through us (Phil 2:12, Eph 2:10), we follow Him the rest of our days in obedience, so that on that great day of final justification our works of faith will be truly good and truly holy by virtue of being created in Christ Jesus through faith. Works, holiness, sanctification, and obedience are all utterly important and necessary in the Christian walk, but they must be put in their proper place, lest we render the gospel opaque, make void the grace of God, or make even the slightest room for human boasting (Galatians 6:14, Eph 2:9).

In the Christian life, faith is the root, works are the fruit. Faith is only as powerful as the object of faith, so faith in Christ is infinitely powerful. By itself, faith is powerless to save; it's the absence of all human working. Never are works the basis of our right standing with God (justification), for if they were, we'd have something to boast about. However, works of love are ever the good fruit of the reconciled life. Good deeds don't make a man good, a man who has been made good by grace does good deeds. The believer who continues to have faith and trust in Jesus Christ will be compelled to do truly good works (since they are motived primarily by love of God and man) in order to express his gratitude to God and to help those in need as God's holy love works in and through him. Through our good works we now grow and increase the gift that God has given us, "until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Nothing matters but faith working through love (Gal 5:6). Love for God and for others is how saving faith in Jesus is worked out in the world.

God is so worthy of our trust, which is what makes unbelief so insane. Will you continue to ruin yourself and eventually die eternally, or will you give up, get out of the driver's seat, and accept this marvelous gift of God, a gift that God offers you sheerly out of His holy love?

My vision

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Not just forgiveness

Salvation is not just about forgiveness. I feel that the modern evangelical church is obsessed with forgiveness and the removal of the guilt of sin (which are important in their proper place). You don't hear much mention of repentance, transformation, and freedom from sin's power. Certainly God has forgiven us through His Son, but we must receive that forgiveness on the condition of repentance and faith - which is really just the biblical way of talking about letting go of our sin and grabbing onto Christ.

Otherwise, God is a minister of sin, for He forgives your sin but allows you to remain under its dominion and succumb to its filth. What kind of salvation is that? Forgiving you of your sin, but leaving you in bondage to it? Is this what Jesus died for? To keep you in a state such that you commit the very same sins for which you asked forgiveness? This isn't the gospel, it's a cruel joke.

God is holy and He cannot be in relationship with that which is unholy. That's why we must come to Jesus on our knees with a contrite heart and confess all of our sin before Him. We have to come to the end of ourselves, let go of it, and commit our lives to Him in faith. Then, in response, God not only forgives us, but He breaks the power of sin in our lives through the sanctifying presence of the Holy Spirit. He then empowers us moment by moment and day by day to overcome temptation, grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, and walk in the Spirit.

To let go of Christ and succumb to temptation by willfully disobeying God is to crash your car on the road of salvation. It's akin to cheating on your spouse. It's extremely serious. If this happens (not when it happens), we must repent and do our first works to get back on the road to glory. God will certainly work to restore such a wayward one, but the point is that he must be restored. If stubborn sin is a regular occurrence, you have no basis for assurance of salvation, for assurance comes from the Spirit who witnesses to our hearts that we are not condemned, and also from the fruit of a transformed life. Those who walk in the darkness are none of His, plain and simple. Either sin reigns, or Christ reigns. Repentance is called a "first" work (Heb 6) because the idea is that you make a clean break with willful sin when you submit to God in penitent faith at the beginning of your discipleship. It's the foundation of the Christian life, not its regular, normative pattern. Sin is deceitful and stupefying. To allow it to reign in our lives is to separate us from God and ultimately harden our hearts to the influence of His saving grace.

Present victory, as well as the present witness of the Holy Spirit, are the only biblical grounds for assurance of salvation. They are the constant fruit of that faith which justifies; they're the gifts that God places in the hands of the sinner who trusts in Christ. The gospel is about both forgiveness and transformation. To preach forgiveness without repentance and subsequent liberation by grace through faith is to preach a false gospel. It also presents a Jesus who does not really save His people from their sin at all. Such a gospel is not good news for a world in bondage to sin and crying out for a Savior.

-----------

Incidentally, I find myself unsettled by the advice that many Christians give people who are struggling with assurance: "Don't trust your feelings! Just believe you are forgiven even if you feel condemned and find yourself under the power of sin." Sure, we shouldn't trust our ephemeral "feelings," as it were, but we should be trusting the felt witness of the Holy Spirit to our spirit that we are redeemed children of God. Don't let anyone but the Holy Spirit tell you that you are in the favor of God - not even yourself! For years I struggled with assurance, and the reason was because I had no basis for such assurance; I was not yet in relationship with God for I had not yet fully committed my heart to Christ in faith. We can't settle for anything less than God's own testimony, both immediately in our hearts and in the fruit of our lives.

Preaching theologically

About a month ago I heard a sermon in which the preacher said when he came upon a biblical text on predestination, "I am not going to go into a theological discussion about this..." I thought, "Why not?" The Bible is a theological book, and it is our job to exegete its message in a thoughtful and faithful way. He had a great opportunity to give an exegetical presentation of the text and he blew it.

The Christian mind also needs discipleship, and it's part of Christian devotion to grapple seriously with biblical theology. The aversion to "preaching theologically" is precisely why we have such fluffy, unsubstantial, and ultimately non-transformational preaching these days. I don't need to be reminded week after week that Jesus loves me, that He has forgiven me, and the like. Those things are certainly important, but let's get beyond the milk to the meat, folks. We preach a serious message that requires serious engagement of the mind. Let's show the world that our faith is worth believing in and thinking about. Let's show them that it matters.

The sun

The sun makes me feel happy. Sunsets are so beautiful.

Why I'm so harsh on Calvinism

Some of my readers may wonder why I'm so tough on Reformed theology. After all, there are so many Reformed believers that love God and desire to glorify Him, so it can't be that bad, can it?

Yes it can. Consistent Reformed theology leads to blasphemous and abominable conclusions, such as the following: (1) God does not love most people (2) God causes sin (3) God is selfish (4) God does not even really love the elect, since He could squash them without shedding a tear, and more.

The glory of God is at stake here, for God is only properly glorified if His character is properly understood and reflected in our theology. The Gospel is also at stake, for to teach that Jesus Christ did not die for every person in the entire world or that God does not love every creature He has made is to malign and insult the pure and holy Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Most Calvinists are inconsistent and therefore their teaching and preaching sounds far more biblical than it would if they were to carry through their Calvinism to its logical conclusion. But consistent Calvinism is an affront to the God of Scripture, the God of holy love. Such Calvinists are probably just sincerely mistaken, but nevertheless their theology carries with it conclusions that are, quite frankly, atrocious.

Think of someone you really love and value being spoken ill of. Now imagine that person is Almighty God. That's how I feel when Calvinists pontificate about their woefully distorted portrait of God. The character of God and the beauty of the Gospel is at stake. Passion is therefore appropriate. While Calvinists can certainly be and usually are genuine Christians, their theology reflects a genuinely distorted view of God and His Gospel.

Some might say, "Kyle, you are attacking a caricature of Calvinism that no Calvinist believes!" Of course most Calvinists will deny the charges I lay at the feet of Reformed theology; however, I am merely presenting Calvinism in its consistent, unadulterated form with all of its necessary conclusions intact. Refusing to see how these horrible conclusions follow necessarily from Calvinistic premises simply amounts to a failure on the part of Calvinists to take their theology to its logical conclusion. If you don't like the conclusions I draw, show me how they don't follow, or abandon Calvinism. There is no other option for the Christian who desires theological and biblical integrity.

Reflections on faith and reason

A little while ago I promised that a post on the relationship between faith and reason would be forthcoming. So, here are some of my incomplete and unsystematic reflections on the topic:

Before I talk about faith and reason, let's get some definitions on the table. What is faith? Biblically, faith is a confident trust in God and His promises. It's full commitment of one's will to God and an unqualified willingness to put all of one's eggs into His basket, though it may be difficult at the moment to see exactly how God will fulfill His promises. Faith is never depicted as "believing what you know ain't true" or believing something for which you have little to no evidence. It's not some blind acceptance of various religious propositions. In the Christian Scriptures, faith is almost always an intelligent, informed, and reasonable choice to trust God on the basis of sufficient evidence and reasons to trust. Faith is always a risk because we can never be entirely certain that God will pull through for us, or if He even exists to pull through for us! Experience shows us that such situations in which we must take risks by committing or entrusting ourselves to persons without certainty that they will come through for us are a part of everyday life - so why would it be any different with God, the ultimate personal Being?

Belief is assenting to a proposition, knowledge is when that proposition corresponds to reality, and biblical faith is entrusting yourself to a personal God on the basis of sufficient, if inconclusive, evidence. Okay, then what is reason? I define reason as the cogitating faculty that we possess as rational beings. It enables us to deduce, induce, and think critically using empirical investigation and logical argumentation. Reasoning is a non-participatory kind of knowing; it tries its best to be detached, unbiased, and dispassionate in its judgments. Reason is an indispensable tool, and, I would add, a gift from a rational God.

I am convinced that the truths of Christianity will never be at odds with the best deliverances of reason. In other words, Christian faith is never in any kind of opposition to reason. They go hand in hand. Not only that, but I also believe that Christianity best explains the facts of experience as discovered through the various enterprises of human knowledge (including science, psychology, anthopology, history, philosophy, and the like) in a coherent fashion. This may surprise some of you hard nosed empiricist types who are under the false impression that "religious" truths are believed wholly apart from good evidence and rationality, as if rational knowledge of the world were in one box and spiritual matters were in another. I see no good reason to hold such a dichotomous view of reality; it seems to me that it's upheld by blind, groundless bias. The history of Christian thought has not been a history that has dispensed of rational considerations; in fact, it has been quite the opposite. Simply put, if Christianity does not stand up to the critical scrutiny of fair-minded, reasoned examination, then Christianity is not worth believing. Faith certainly goes beyond mere reasoning and evidence (since faith is a relational act of trust and not simply a cognitive judgment), but it never goes against it.

However, having said that, a word of caution must be uttered. Christianity is not the type of truth that we can be rationally indifferent about. It raises extreme existential questions that both call us to account and demand a response from our will. One cannot know the deepest truths of Christianity with certainty without being willing to participate in it. In other words, detached, self-referential reasoning often puts us in the wrong posture before God. It tends to put us at the center of things (without good rational justification that this is the best way to arrive at truth, to boot). After all, reason is not always as "objective" as we imagine it to be. In the hands of fallen human beings, reason is often (mis)used for our own selfish, autonomous ends. We often choose how plausible something will appear to us based upon what we want to see. It's for this reason that the message of the cross is seen as foolishness to those who are perishing: it judges sinners who see it as foolish because they refuse to come to the light in fear that their evil deeds will be exposed. I don't think Christianity can ever be proved in such a way so as to please sinners who in the end don't want to commit their lives to God anyway. What if we can only be certain of the truth (that Christianity is true) if we are willing to go beyond ourselves and admit our insufficiency before God? If God exists, is this not (paradoxically) the most reasonable conclusion to draw?

Moreover, who says that the only way to know something is through critical reason? In fact, I think it's clear that if a good God exists, He would make it possible for us to know Him immediately through direct encounters with Him in experience. Actually, if you think about it, the agnostic who sits back as if the theist must prove that God exists through reason before he will believe is really just resting on an unjustified knowledge claim under the pretense of neutrality, namely, the claim that knowledge can only come through detached, critical reason. That's quite a claim and therefore requires adequate justification. Just when the agnostic thinks he is being the most rational, he is actually being quite irrational in his blind commitment to the abilities of reason to discover all truth.

Reason is important and even vital to both defending and commending the Christian faith, but it is simply unreasonable to think that reason alone is capable of discovering all truth, nevermind spiritual truth. It is intellectual hubris of the highest order to believe that the only way to know truth is through our reasoning abilities. A truly humble intellectual must be open to the real possibility that a good God exists and reveals Himself to human beings in a personal and direct way. That's the most reasonable position.