Let My People Think

Archive for the ‘Just Thinking’ Category

Being versus Doing. Good versus God.

Being versus Doing I once thought that in order to experience the living Spirit of God, it’s a good idea to lay aside secondhand preconceived ideas about him. I no longer think that it’s just a good idea. I am now convinced that it’s a requirement. It simply won’t work the other way.

There are too many that rush into their calling without being personally equipped and commissioned by Jesus Christ, and the results speak for themselves. We don’t know how to hear God’s voice with clarity, we don’t know how to defeat the enemy with predictable results, we don’t know how to influence people on the heart level.

Apostle Paul went to a desert immediately after conversion, and didn’t come out till he met Jesus face to face. Our conventional wisdom today would have told him to become part of a local church right away. Paul did do that in a few years, but not until he experimentally connected with living Christ. Apparently, being in a desert with Jesus offered him more that being in Jerusalem with the other apostles.

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Two kinds of loyalty: principled commitment vs. sycophantism

Loyalty pledgeOne of the foundational maxims of Judeo-Christian worldview is that “you shall have no other gods before me”. Anything or anyone which you consider as the source of your livelihood, economic and financial security, safety, security, etc. in a way which overshadows your faith in God and his ability to supply, support, and protect you is considered to be an idol. That’s a classic definition of idolatry. Your idols could be persons, organizational or national entities, or things like finances, possessions, firearms, etc.

Of course this doesn’t mean we can’t have relationships or possessions. What it does mean, though, is that we should frame our relationships and structure our economic lives so that those work in synergy with out faith in God, and with our personal principles proper for Christ-followers. Generally speaking, as long as we genuinely consider God and his kingdom to be the source of every blessing we have, and everything else merely a conduit, we are on the safe ground.

There’s a lot of talk about loyalty these days. I shall avoid political contexts, and instead I want to zoom in to this concept relative to Christianity.
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Montesquieu, Apostle Paul, and the “governing principles”

Governing Principle Marcus AureliusMontesquieu was a man who rewrote political philosophy of his day. His ideas form a foundation of our democratic republic here in the U.S., and form a backbone of the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s a great quote from one of his writings:

“It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans, who had a continuous sequence of successes when they were guided by a certain plan, and an uninterrupted sequence of reverses when they followed another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act in every monarchy, elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance of one battle—that is, a particular cause—has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents.”
– Montesquieu, “Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence”

Obvious political implications aside, it’s hard not to admire this man’s systemic thinking which was way ahead of his time. That’s the mind of an architect and an an engineer.

Great American mathematician Greg Nash called those types of things “the governing principles”. This is applicable to in any branch of human endeavor. Do yourself a favor and check him out for yourself in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”.
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Bible: a study tool or a God-substitute

BibliolatryIt’s fascinating how often the Bible gets deified, based on the way we use certain phrasings: “The Bible says …”, “The Scriptures teach us “, “The Bible tells us”.

In all of those examples, the Bible is antropomorphized – i.e., it’s getting endowed with characteristics which belong to sentient beings. That is without warrant. The teacher is the Holy Spirit. The One who is to be obeyed is God. The human being to emulate is Jesus. And the Bible is simply a very, very useful tool on the journey. It is the official historically accurate record of God’s dealings with humankind, containing a lot of “inside information”.

Typically, by the time we get to studying our Bibles, we are already given the looking glass through which we perceive everything that’s written in the Bible. In doing so, we calibrate our reading experience to our apriori theology, and we draw out and magnify things that are in line with what we already believe, and minimize and discard the things that could challenge our existing beliefs.

So, often times it’s not “the Bible teaching me”, but actually quite the opposite of that. It’s “me” telling the Bible what I think it should be saying.
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The image of God in us

Image of GodWe are all created in the image of God. Inside of every single one of us, there’s a better human struggling to get out. If that’s focused upon, recognized, and encouraged, that will happen.

From a social standpoint, I really don’t so much care what religion people formally confess as I care that by their actions and attitudes they see the other human being as being infinitely worthy of love and care. In daily life, it’s more productive to deal with good Samaritans (atheists / Muslims / Buddhists / whoever else) that care for the person on the side of the road, rather than be in the company of those who use the name of God as an excuse to ignore or even provoke needless sufferings of a fellow human being. For the latter group, it’s immaterial whether they refer to themselves as Christian or Muslim or Nazi or Communist. Those designations are a mere veneer over the real mechanism of destroying the image of God in a fellow human being.

The problem that happened as the result of the Fall was not that humans became wretches / irreparably depraved / etc. The problem was that death entered the world, and corrupted the image of God in people and in the world. What was needed was an infusion of life, of divine nature, and the presence of Someone who would believe in people’s infinite worth. That was the mission and the role of Jesus. He didn’t die for us because we were wretches. He died for us because we were mortal and frail, and also because we believed in the lies that told us that we were not worthy of God. We believed the voices of others, and had lost our way. He showed us exactly what we were worth, and he showed us that the way to God is simply by allowing our human nature to be infused with the nature divine (theosis), and letting that combination take over our lives.

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Whose image are you bearing? A question with far-reaching implications.

Image of GodHumans are the God-breathed image bearers of God. God created us in the same general class of beings as himself, which is why we can relate to him on many levels.

You may have heard religious ideas about how every person born after the fall of humanity was devoid of the image of God in them, was born “utterly depraved”, “born of the devil”, personally repulsive and deeply abominable to God, etc. That’s not only Scripturally inaccurate (if you go beyond superficial prooftexting), but it’s also very conducive to awakening the worst of our instincts relative to other human beings. Such teachings simply attempt to dehumanize fellow humans, to strip the image of God off of them, since that’s the only rhetorical way of gaining imaginary authority to destroy them through slander and violence.

What happened after “the fall” is that humanity acquired a progressively thicker layer of self-reliance followed by blindness followed by sin followed by death – in that order. They departed from the divinely established order by relying on various systems of right and wrong (self-reliance), their worldviews and perspectives got retrained to perceive the world in the terms of “right vs. wrong” and “with us vs. against us” dichotomies (blindness), their skewed perspectives (think spiritual eyesight) caused them to constantly miss the mark in their interactions with other people and with God (sin in “hamartia” in Greek – literally, “missing the mark”), and in continually operating in sin they progressed in death (or entropy – increasing degrees of disorder, culminating in state of disorder – literal and irreversible death).
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Integrity. Reclaiming our right to structure our faith engagement in line with our deepest heart convictions

IntegrityIn the modern world, we are truly experiencing a crisis of integrity. I have no idea when it became normal for leaders to stop standing by their words, drastically changing the stories several times in a row in a course of days. Reading recent news stories about the United Airlines CEO squirm around like an eel on a frying pan trying to explain why it’s OK to knock out the teeth and break the nose of a paying airline customer gives a new meaning to a phrase “top communicator”. The only thing that’s uplifting about that particular story is the universal outrage that followed. On a practical level, that outpouring of wrath at a big corporation gone fat and proud gave me more faith in humankind than perhaps anything else in recent news.

After 2016, many Christians stopped looking to national Evangelical figures for examples of value-driven integrity-based leadership. That distrust has been in the making for some time. In the fall of 2016, I remember a time when a leading Evangelical ethicist changed his lofty ethical prescription 3 times in the course of 10 days. Not just modified it a little bit, but dramatically flip-flopped on his stance – went one way, then in a few days completely reversed himself, then in a few more days reversed the reversal. It was truly a painfully pathetic sight to behold. It seemed to have served as a capstone to a trend that has been two to three decades in the making.

It was clear that “being faithful to the end” somehow turned into “being faithful to one’s tribal self-interest to the end”. And for the publicly vocal and politically engaged group of Christians that the above-mentioned ethicist claimed to have represented, any claim to moral or ethical higher ground, along with any right to criticize ethical and moral relativism, went straight out the window. Yep, just like that. You can’t just flip-flop 2 times on “timeless moral and ethical values” in the course of 10 days and still expect to be recognized as a beacon of pure light in the corrupt world.
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Fear of death – an unholy idol of nominal Christianity

Fear of DeathSomething just dawned on me, as clear as day. At the root of the way modeled by Jesus Christ is the certainty and security about our relationship with our good heavenly father, carried into eternity. At the root of religious fundamentalism is the ever-present good old fear of death – and at its core, that fear of death is unmitigated even by the cross of Calvary. These two streams flow within the larger nominal framework of Christianity. They may employ the same terminology and the same sacred texts, but the difference is truly night and day.

Here’s what brought it to light for me. During these past few years, I’ve read theological books on a variety of subjects, and from a variety of perspectives. I’ve read much material on the subject of atonement. I’ve read entire books on some of the views, in addition to reading background material on all of the currently and historical popular views. I came away with a renewed understanding of the complexity of the issue. What’s important – awareness of those perspectives, coupled with my own in-depth research and analysis, gave me many tools to help me construct my own understanding of the meaning of the atonement.

I did very similar kind of research with the issues of “hell”, “heaven”, “theodicy” (goodness of God vs. evil that’s in the world), “end times”, and many others. Again – my awareness of those perspectives, coupled with my own in-depth research and analysis, empowered me to construct my own understanding of the meaning of the “hell”, “heaven”, “theodicy”, “end times”, etc. My understanding of these and many other subjects became much more textured, much deeper, much more internally coherent, much more resonant with the Scriptures in their historical and cultural context – and as the result, often very different from the commonly circulated pop-theology teachings.
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Atonement – the deeper meaning behind the Christian Easter holiday

Atonement Salvador DaliGenerally speaking, there are about 8 or so atonement theories out there, with variants. To me, it’s easier to divide them into two groups.

One group of atonement theories postulate that the problems primarily stem from personal dimension of people (who are fundamentally perverse), and of God (who is fundamentally angry about people.) What Jesus did was more or less redirect the focal point of God’s anger to himself, thus getting us off the hook. The main idea is that of legal transaction.

The other group of atonement theories postulates that the problems to be solved are of systemic nature. They lie with both with human psyche individually (egotism) and socially (systemic oppression and scapegoating). There is also a cosmic dimension to the problem statement (decay and death). What Jesus did is he absorbed the individual, the social, and the cosmic sin (and therefore death), triumphed over them, and created a mechanism of being able to tap into the power to overcome all those.

I would submit to you that the second group of atonement theories has much more coherence and explanatory power. Also, the 2nd group is the one that leads you to living like a responsible, fully empowered representative of God in every area of life. It’s the only one that can underwrite consistently replicable results, and not just occasional haphazard “victories”.
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The way of the Jedi and the Gospel of Jesus Christ

jediI really like the Jedi. To me, they are a very good representation of what I want to mature into with God. Put Jesus Christ and his power in place of Jedi’s concept of force, and we have here a great metaphor for a holistic teaching that captivates the heart, uses the mind, works with great power, guides you on the path of righteousness, preserves you in your holiness, and keeps you away from pride, greed, lust, and just about any other sin.

Here are the reasons why they way of the Jedi captures my heart:

  • They are persons of honor. They don’t have a moral code that they adhere to in a slovenly fashion. They have an honor code that they are trained to follow as a matter of heart conviction, no matter the cost.

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