Continue to be Thankful!

The day before Thanksgiving Day, I got a call from a distraught mother. She requested that I go visit her son who is on a suicide watch at the jail. I did. That evening I picked up my kids from the gym and we drove to pickup a few movies for the holiday. As we drove the snow fell gently and we listened to our favorite Christmas song (Little Drummer Boy). I knew Jody was home warming up some good food for supper that night. As I relaxed behind the wheel I was truly, truly thankful for what I had at that moment, my family, this country, a job.... I knew given the call that I received earlier that day that what we take for granted, for example our family, might not be there always. True thanksgiving is to recognize as precious what we take for granted everyday, and to give thanks to God for loaning us those those precious people, those precious things and those precious moments. Therefore let us continue to be thankful.  

Why Grace

What sets Christianity apart from other world religions is this idea that one is saved by God's grace only and that one cannot enough good to earn any of it (Ephesians2:8). It is not that Christianity does not believe in human effort or good works. The truth is that Christianity has done more good in this world than any other religion. It has given birth to such organizations as the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Salvation Army and through such Christians as Mother Teresa has done much to care for the poor and the impoverished in this world. But Christianity is also a religion of humility before the greatness of God. It is not that Christianity does not believe in good works or human effort, it is that Christianity does not believe that a human being can do enough to enter heaven without God’s help. It is not that Christianity is arrogant or narrow-minded. It is actually a sign of humility that Christians claim Jesus, the help sent by God as the way to God and does not claim to have a spiritual or moral map-quest to God. Christianity’s assessment of the human condition is sober, because it realizes that humans corrupted by sin are unable to keep the high standard of God’s law. For that reason Apostle Paul in Romans 7:14 writes, “For we know that the law is spiritual but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery to sin…For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Paul describes well the human predicament, the inability of a human to overcome the tendency to sin.
In fact, it is the do it yourself religious philosophy that seems arrogant. As Ajith Fernando, a Christian scholar from Sri Lanka pointed out in a sermon, self sufficiency is a product of the human pride that says we do not need God, we do not want a Savior and that we can do it ourselves. And pride as we know is the source of all sorts of sin. Therefore, “you can save yourself” religious or secular philosophy actually is the product of that pride of self-sufficiency of humanity which itself was the first sin against God. In Genesis 3 we read that humanity wanted to be God themselves instead of letting God be the God.  On the other hand Christianity’s emphasis on the grace of God and on faith or trust in Jesus Christ for salvation is a reversal of that pride. It is regarded as righteousness in the Bible because it relies not on self but on God (Romans 4:5).

Why God Allows Suffering

 Christian philosopher David Wood points out that our definition of "good" is something that maximizes our happiness and minimizes our pain (Responding to the Argument of Evil in "Evidence for God, p.40). David Wood tells us that we treat God as a cosmic thermostat who would keep the universe just the way we like it, and for that reason when we are confronted with evil our belief in a good God is rattled. But God sometimes likes to turn up or turn down the heat to our utter discomfort for a reason. In Rom 1:24 we read that God gave sinners who refused to honor God up to the consequences of their sins. It is like when we decide  not to obey God and play with sexual immorality God gives us up to sexually transmitted diseases, divorce and lawsuits. And he does so for a reason. According to Chrysostom, this is designed to awaken us to the awful seriousness of our situation. This is what Phillip Yancey refers to as the gift of pain. In his book Where is God when it Hurts Yancey describes pain in life a gift from God that no one wants. He describes pain as something necessary for life, because pain serves as a warning signal that something is wrong. Without pain we will not know when we cut ourselves. Without pain we might bleed ourselves to death. Philip Yancey urges us to listen to our pains. In jail I see so many inmates want to get baptized and be right with God. God uses their pain and suffering as a means to speak to them. Therefore, presence of evil that produces pain does not mean that God does not exist or that he is not all powerful and all good, but it means that he allows us to suffer evil in order to warn us of our problem of living without God and living in disobedience to God so that we would turn to God.

New Idolatry

In a "New York Times Magazine" article, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker minimized the crime committed by a teenager who delivered her baby at a prom and then put it in a garbage bag. According to Pinker we should not label this as a murder, because mothers in the animal world sometimes kill their offspring if they think their prospects are poor. The same type of argument based on evolution is proposed by the founder of Ashley Madison, a website that helps married men and women have affairs. They advertise it as "life is short, have an affair!" The founder claims that since we are animals it is natural for us to have many partners. This is the newest form of idolatry in which animal worship has taken the shape of imitating animal behavior and becoming less and less human created in the image of God. As Paul in Romans 1:22-23 says, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles."

Ritual

I have been thinking a lot about how we evangelicals react towards rituals. Some argue, for example, praying the Lord's Prayer every Sunday turns into a ritual and we cease to do it without much reflection on what it has to say. But is life not surrounded by rituals that we do without reflection, rituals that give structure  and meaning to our lives? For example, is marriage not a ritual. The same man or woman everyday. We wake up, we kiss, we talk, we share dinner, we go to bed, and the next day we start the whole process again. And we do it often without reflecting much on the meaning of our togetherness. Should we then in the name of proper reflection be married every other month? Absolutely not! Rituals are necessary. They are good-habits formed.

Wilderness Journey

You cannot enter the Promised Land without first going through the wilderness. Between freedom from slavery in Egypt and the milk and honey of the Promised Land lies the God-intended wilderness filled with trial and testing. It is a character forming time, a character that God desires. Israel had to go through that wilderness. Jesus had to go through that too. In all the synoptic gospels we read that after Jesus was baptized and the voice of God pronounced God's approval of Jesus , he was led by God's Spirit into the wilderness to be tried and tested (Matt 3-4; Mk 1:9-12; Lk 3:21, 4:1-13). Hebrews 5:8 says that although Jesus was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. No matter who you are, if you are a Christian you will have to go through that wilderness of trial and testing. The Bible says that the disciples are not above the Lord. In John 15:20 Jesus tells his disciples that a servant is not greater than the master. Therefore not to expect a better treatment in life than the one Jesus received as the Son of God. But when we turn to the “health, wealth and prosperity gospel” of our culture, I feel that we are saying to Jesus we are better than you. Look you were poor, we celebrate prosperity, you were persecuted we wallow in popularity, you were rejected we enjoy wide acceptance.

Evangelism and Worship

Often the word 'evangelism' is not received well in our society. It is treated by many as a word that implies Christian arrogance, intolerance and superiority that tells people what they ought to believe. And for that reason many Christians shy away from evangelism. However, Apostle Paul viewed it very differently. He saw evangelism as an act of worship. In Rom 15:16 Paul writes, “... because of the grace given to me by God, so that the offerings of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” Paul considered it a sheer grace extended to him by God when God called him into his service to go specifically to the Gentile (non-Jews) with the gospel and serve them. And he describes that ministry in terms of priestly ministry. A priest's responsibility among other things included making an offering to God. Paul is viewing himself as a priest who through the preaching of the gospel making an offering of Gentile converts to God. In essence Paul views his task of evangelism as an act of worship in which he makes an offering to God consisting of people he brings to God. In Isaiah 1:12-17 we read that God is not interested in offerings of animals or incense but in how God's people dealt with other people. The same is true of Christian worship, the true worship of God includes not merely bringing offering of  money or praise to God every Sunday, but by bringing offering of people whom God loves and people who were lost to God. The true offering that God desires is people reconciled to God. This is the offering that pleases God most. This is why we Christians must evangelize.