Category: Mankind’s Problem

Why you desperately need Holy Scripture

From flickr.comYou desperately need Holy Scripture.  Yes, you need it much more than you think.

Now, you don’t need Holy Scripture to improve your self-image.  (It doesn’t attempt to do that anyway; it is quite the equal opportunity offender.)  You don’t need it to make friends and influence people.  Jesus was no motivational speaker and didn’t put much stock in popular thought.  You certainly don’t need it to entertain you.  You’ve got satellite T.V.  You’ve got social media. You’re well connected.  No, the Bible is quite dispensable when it comes to this short-sighted, consumerist litmus test for relevance.

Ah, but once we factor in what we need the most, that is, salvation from an offended God, then the importance of Holy Scripture is magnified.  So magnified that it dwarfs everything else.

You are a sinner.  So am I.  Not by our own self-flattering and comparative measurements, to be sure.  But according to the standards of God, sin is sin.  Full stop.  And “the wages of sin is death.”

We turn in vain to nature for help.  Nature can tell volumes.  “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handywork.”  “For the invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that [men and women] are without excuse.”  But that’s the kicker.  When we, a guilty, ungodly race, seek to get information on how to approach God, all we find is how good, how pure, how holy, and how inflexibly righteous God is.  And by contrast, how dirty and defiled we are.  “And if thou shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?”  God is a “consuming fire” and we are dry stubble.  Nature can only echo the voice of our conscience, that we have trespassed the divine law.  And we are under God’s wrath.   “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”

How, then, can we escape His unsparing Day of Judgment?  How can we pacify our consciences?  How can we once again walk with God in the cool of the day, as friends – as it once was and ought to have been?

Deus dixit.  God spoke!  And the word He spoke was of mercy and grace.  He has “spoken comfortably to His people,” proclaiming pardon, freedom, and liberation through His Son.

 “Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leaven men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.  Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church …” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.1)

A new (and alarming) declaration of indepedence

Recent days have shown how far some judges will go to impose their views on the majority of citizens.  Just yesterday, one solitary judge in Utah by fiat overturned that state’s constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman.  This right on the heels of the same in New Mexico.  On a purely political level, this trend ought to be alarming.

And yet, this cannot be alarming merely because the will of the citizens of Utah or other such states has been steamrolled.  In our democratic America, it is ever and always “we the people.”  If a judge overrules the will of the people, then there is a defiant outcry.  But if a judge rubber-stamps the current of popular opinion, applause erupts.  Yet, what if the majority of the people are wrong?  (Cue gasps.)  Yes, I did just suggest the unthinkable.  But there it is.  And if they ever are wrong, a judge could and should overrule their wrong decisions.  And deal with the fallout unflinchingly.

What happened in Utah should outrage the people, within and without the state.  But not because a single judge crossed their will, enshrined by law.  What should shock the folks of Utah and the rest of the United States is that God’s law has been overturned.

That is evident for those who do not willfully close their eyes.  Nature speaks.  The male and female bodies were designed for each other.  Pick up that anatomy book again and review.  In detail.  Behold the signature craftsmanship of God!  The unnaturalness of man and man or woman and woman is obvious.  How?  Barrenness is not a painful exception in such unions; it is an inflexible law.  This barrier to conception and childbearing is a clear stamp of God’s total disapproval.

To this testimony of nature, God adds His revealed Word.  “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Lev. 18:22).

Judges who overturn God’s law will have to reckon with God.  And citizens who – by their elected representatives – overturn God’s will will answer to Him as well.  We have great reason to fear, both people and officials, elected and unelected.  We have been transgressing God’s law for decades, flagrantly disregarding His commandments and sanctioning them after the fact by law or decree.  Yesterday was but another step in a long process.  Having given our stamp of approval to sex outside of marriage, to no-fault divorce, and even to the inhumanity of abortion, it is not terribly surprising that same-sex marriage eventually gets a pass.  Most heterosexuals have abandoned their moral high ground to critique anything they may not prefer.

We are effectively writing a new declaration of independence.  From God.  And the real alarm should be that we are sorely trying His patience, and that His patience will at some point come to an abrupt and jarring end.  How long will God withhold His hand of judgment?  How long will He indulge our prodigal orgy of lawlessness?  I genuinely fear that our day of reckoning is coming.  Whether by cyber-terrorism, or by an unstoppable epidemic, or by some other fearful national calamity, it is coming.  And that is only the beginning, when one reckons with the fact that temporal judgments are omens of those beyond death.  “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psa. 9:17).

O, that we might come to our senses!  All of us – “we the people.”  And with broken hearts and tears of sorrow, that we might pledge our allegiance to God once again, and to His Christ.

In the aftermath of Newtown

We’re all still reeling from the news.  The absolute senselessness of it all falls like a dense, dark fog on your heart.  We can’t suppress the mental images of horror.  The unthinkable end of those precious little ones – just like our children.  Your mind just wants to hit the brakes.  Just stop thinking about it.  But try as you might, it lingers.  And haunts.

But then we snap to and begin the collective reappraisal.  We can’t let this kind of thing happen again.  Hence the renewed debate over gun control.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I fully agree that this is an issue that warrants rethink.  The principle that firearms should be regulated is a no-brainer.  But Newtown demands infinitely more than policy or enforcement reappraisal.  Newtown demands deep, meaningful, national introspection.

By introspection, I don’t mean seriously rethinking the 2nd Amendment.  Guns are a necessary evil in a world of bad guys.  As long as there are bad guys, we’ll need guns.  Of various sorts.  And as long as government is prone to fall into the hands of bad guys, private citizens will need them.  I wish it weren’t so.  But let’s face the music.  Until the Kingdom comes and the violent “beat their swords into ploughshares,” guns are here to stay.

But that’s not really my point.  My point is that we need introspection on the national soul in the most radical sense.  Gun control is a superficial solution – and arguably a big distraction – when the core, the heart, the very control-center of our national being is quite out of control. 

Even if we craft better gun legislation or simply enforce existing legislation better, will it change the fact that across every index, America is driving well in excess of the speed limit, music blaring, weaving back and forth over the double yellow lines?

Will it change the fact that we cannot control our marriages?  Or for that matter, our tempers?  Will it restrain our sexual overindulgence?  Or put a curfew on our decades-long bacchanalia?

Will it help us control our waistlines, the widest in the world?  Will it curb our spending?   It’s not just government going off the fiscal cliff.  Before we wag our fingers at our politicians, let’s just watch the grainy security videos from Black Friday.  Yes, that’s us, America.   And now we stampede on Thursdays, while the stuffing is still warm.

And perhaps most painful to ask, will any legislation help us control our own dear children?  They see that we cannot control ourselves, so why should they?

I wish it were all a matter of better policy, better enforcement, or both.  But it just isn’t.  Newtown was hardly an isolated event.  It is an obvious link in a chain.  And it points to something much, much deeper.  Something systemic.  Something spiritual.  Nor is it just about them.  Whoever they are.  This is about us – all of us.  Right here in our sleepy, little law-abiding towns.

What’s more, the tragedy after the tragedy is that it seems the only way to regain control is to surrender it.  To hand the keys over to a sober driver.  Or the license back to the D.O.T.   It’s an answer to be sure, but a profoundly demoralizing one.  And quite scary, when you’re tempted to gaze into the murky, crystal ball.

But is it the only option?  There is, after all, the Author of control, from whom we’ve fled.  We can always go back Home – into the arms of the Father through His only-begotten Son.  There we can have forgiveness, welcome, structure, and peace.  But it will mean coming to our senses.  It will mean a full-stop to our superficiality and blame-shifting – and a total acceptance of our reckless folly and rebellion.  It will mean confession of sin, personal and corporate.  It will mean repentance.  Even amending our constitution to reflect it all.

Maybe, just maybe,  Newtown will be a turning point.  Where America goes deeper than mere policy or enforcement and instead rediscovers her God.  Now that’s a painless train of thought, with images you don’t have to shake.  A day when “the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets.”  You can think about that.  And you can pray for it, knowing that God will surely hear.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.”

Sabbath sound and silence

Our busy world  is full of noise.  It is about inescapable it seems.  And what is worse, most get the jitters without their incessant tunes and tweets.  Silence is a disturbance, no longer a retreat.

On  a recent Sunday morning, my wife and I sat on our deck enjoying the cool breeze.  All was calm and serene, fitting for a day of meditation and devotion.  Then an unknown neighbor to the back fires up his circular saw.   The little bubble of sacred silence burst.

And yet, there is a sound that, quite frankly, I wish I heard more in those often quiet moments.  Every once in a rare while, the silence of a (sadly) sleepy Sunday morning is broken by the chiming of church bells.  Strange!  And yet, the sound brings pleasure.  It is a reminder of a day when Americans were more contemplative, more content, and of course, much more devout. Those bells used to chime, calling worshipers to the house of  God.  But such pleasure is mixed.  Those sounds may be quaint, perhaps, to those with a taste for nostalgia but little taste for organized religion.  Yet  they don’t belong today as they were once regarded, as a symbol of religious authority.  Aesthetic pleasing, but hardly a summons.

But God continues to call, to speak amid the bustle.  And those who have ears to hear will turn down the volume and listen.  And come.

Disregard for the true credit rating

Over the last number of weeks and months, the American people have been repeatedly warned of the consequences of Congress’ failure to raise the debt ceiling.  Many prognosticate that the consequences would be catastrophic for the economy, the initial portent being the loss of our prized AAA credit rating

But while everyone gets the jitters over the verdict of Standard & Poor’s, it is not their decision that is to be feared.  Nor is it the Chinese government, who has for so long banked on the credibility of the U.S. economic machine.  The U.S. is fast losing credit with God.  Our fiscal profligacy is but a symptom of our deeper irreligion and but one of many heads in our hydra of moral decadence.  How long can we party before God pulls the plug?   It very well may be a total economic collapse.  But that will be only the beginning of birthpangs. 

We must hear heaven’s alarm within these omens.  And we must repent and humble ourselves before the Most High.  For against Him, Him only, have we sinned, and done this evil in His sight.

Tired?



Are you tired? 

Tired of the monotony?  Every day the same?  Tired of the treadmill of life?  Tired of the aches and pains that won’t go away?  The post-holiday bills?  The post-holiday dreariness? 

Or are you tired of certain people?  Do they make your life complicated?  Do they cause you more work, or make your work less of a joy and more of a chore?  Are you tired of your relationship?  Is it no longer the exciting adventure it once was? 

Are you tired trying to keep up with expectations?  Your boss is ever making demands that always seem out of reach.  Or, you can never make your parents happy – or maybe it’s your children.  How demanding they can be!  They always need an extra $20, or $40.  And if you won’t cough it up, they’ll make a scene. 

Are you tired, my friend?  Out of breath? 

Maybe you’re tired of trying to be thin.  Trimming down can be hard work!  You see your husband’s eyes wandering, and you don’t fit into the clothes you used to wear five years ago.  You try and try, you work and work.  And yet that perfect body dangled in front of you in every commercial and on the cover of every magazine is just out of reach.  And you’re tired of it.

Perhaps you are tired intellectually.  You have tried to wrap your mind around challenging problems.  You’ve read, you’ve studied.  You’ve become quite a scholar, and you thought that would put your mind at ease from all those thorny questions of life.  What is it all about?  Is there ultimate meaning?  Is there any certainty in ethics – or, for that matter, is there any certainty at all?  Are we just left with rival points of view, like bickering children without parents to intervene? 

Are you tired in your pursuit after happiness?  You’ve tried so many things to get it.  You want it in the perfect job, but there is no perfect job.  You want it in the perfect man.  How tired you are of men!  Perhaps you indulge yourself in one sexual encounter after the other.  But have you found happiness yet?  Is true rest there?  Or isn’t this quest just a cruel taskmaster, driving you on like a slave? 

Are you tired?  Exhausted?  Weighted down with a load that you just can’t bear another minute?  I have good news for you.  Jesus, the eternal Son of God, has stepped into your weary world.  Full of life, full  of joy, full of rest – and He offers it to you.  “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”(Matt. 11:28).  The ease, the comfort, the quiet, the contentment – everything you have been seeking, longing for.  It’s in his hands.  The Father gave it to Him, and He welcomes you to it.

You know, your problem not so much that you seek the comfort of rest.  You’re wired to avoid trouble and seek rest.  God made you that way.  Your problem and mine, though, is that we have fallen into sin.  Sin has spread through the whole of your being, tainting everything.  It has perverted your mind, telling you to find satisfaction in things and not the Giver of those things.  It tells you even to justify doing evil and to call it ‘good’ – as long as it makes you happy. 

Sin has also warped your will and emotions.  You’re wired to seek pleasure, but the wires are now twisted, bent out of shape and broken. Perhaps you find pleasure in sexual uncleanness or in gawking and ridiculing others.  Maybe you get comfort from venting your angst at people who frustrate you.  The release – oh, the release!  You got that off your chest (and now it’s on hers)!  But after all of that nasty business, have you found rest after all?  Isn’t it still out of arm’s reach, if not just a bit farther off? 

You see, the God who wired us to seek rest is Himself the only restful rest.  Or if you like, God is the only rest that is worthy of the name.  St. Augustine once put it this way, “our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Rest cannot be found in sin.  Nor can in be found in the myriad of otherwise good things in this world that just weren’t designed to fill the God-shaped void in our soul.  What we, tired and burdened  wretches need is in the Father – and in His Son. 

Come to Him.  He invites you, if you are tired.  Leave behind your sins, as wearisome as they are.  “The way of transgressors is hard.” Turn from your vain attempts to find rest in people, in property, in pleasures.  They are mirages.  Their breasts are dry – there is no nourishment, no satisfaction there. 

Are you tired of being tired?  “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

All for Nothing?

Archaeologists in Denmark had had made amazing discoveries. In the middle of bogs and lakes, they were finding all kinds of ancient artifacts – precious jewels, swords, and even the hulls of finely crafted warships. Many of them belonged to the fourth century A.D., several hundred years before the Vikings went on their rampages throughout Europe and ventured into the New World.

(from flickr.com)The amazing thing, however, is how they got there. These valuables were not lost, but thrown away. You see, in those days these people believed that powerful spirits lived in lakes, gods who controlled their lives. If they won a victory in battle, they would not ‘take the spoil,’ but would toss it all into the lake as an offering to the gods who lived there. It was all a kind of insurance policy. Toss in these valuables, and that respect earns you the good favor of the unseen water-dwellers. To pocket the goods just might seal your doom.

What a terrific waste, you might say! If, in fact, one of these ancient swords was worth, say, a new Camry in the modern day, then just imagine the power of that lie. Nothing demanded these costly jewels. Nothing was appeased by the enemies’ swords. And in return for these riches, nothing promised them protection from the next bloody raid.

We might laugh at such nonsense. And yet with all our education, degrees, careers, houses, cars, cell phones, and a thousand other trinkets of modern convenience, what is it all for? We’ve got to toss them away as we leave this life. Our earthly possessions will have to be left elsewhere for some other giddy archaeologist to dig up a thousand years later. So what is it all for? All for nothing?

And yet others  just might excuse these primitive folk with a polite, ‘Well, if it worked for them, it was worth it.’ We live in a time when everything is relative. Who is to look down on these ancient people for their beliefs? Everyone is entitled to his own opinions.

But did it really ‘work’ for them? Let’s not kid ourselves. These poor people wasted their hard-earned riches. And if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves, we are fast approaching the brink the next world only to toss – not just our goods – but our very lives into the abyss.

Beyond nothing, however, there is something. There is Someone. He has made you, given you “life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25). But He does not ‘work for you,’ as those Danish lake gods worked for those who bought their protection. That’s the difference. With God, it is all a free gift. And He who has given you everything requires nothing short of your life. It is His!

So we don’t ask if God works for you; but do you work for God? “The LORD hath made all things for himself” (Prov. 16:4). Yes, to give yourself up to God is to lose everything.

But that loss is not a waste. It is a gain. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Mat. 16:25). Cast it all into the hands of God.