Barton Jahn's Blog
August 5, 2021
Housing Construction Needs Specific Offensive and Defensive Game-Plans Built on Data
One of the basic problems in housing construction today, in terms of achieving the cost benefits of assembly-line efficiency is that not a large enough number of houses are built at each building site.
Trial-run debugging that produces the benefits of the traditional mass-production assembly-line…of achieving the lowest cost-per-unit…is based upon the idea of manufacturing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of identical, repetitive products.
The artistic diversity of architectural designs is a direct result of the housing construction industry realizing long before Henry Ford’s Model-T assembly-line that fully assembled houses are too large in size to be manufactured at a single location then shipped to building sites.
Once the notion of constructing hundreds of thousands of identical, repetitive, 2,400 square-foot, three-bedroom, two bathroom houses on a mass-production assembly-line is abandoned…then the artistic diversity of innovative variations in design takes over.
From an aesthetic viewpoint this reality provides interest and variety to the design and construction of houses.
But from a manufacturing viewpoint this provides the challenge of discovering, documenting, and disseminating the debugging information that accrues exponentially by this very same innovative diversity of the variety of square-footage size, architectural style, interior finishes, and orientation on unique building sites…of each individual new house being constructed.
This is what makes perfect housing design and construction a topic of interest in the massive-sized industry of building construction.
The assembly-line debugging information gleaned from the mass-production manufacturing of tennis rackets does not carry-over to the mass-production manufacturing of a particular model of dining room table.
But the value of the initial trial-run debugging of the assembly-line for the mass-production of a particular model of tennis racket is found in the large number of identical, repetitive tennis rackets being manufactured.
Because many of the same building trades practices are used in constructing new houses that are all different in size, style, and price range…this creates one database of debugging information that is common to all new housing construction, and another database of varied debugging information that is specific to each unique building site…scattered all over the countryside.
But it is the starting reality of the large size of houses that dictates the method of assembly…and produces the reality of assembly-line debugging on housing construction projects that have a limited number of products to build and short time-spans to work with.
Before moving on…it might be good here to expand upon and summarize the concept presented in the Introduction in this book, of housing construction being different:
For housing construction projects, after all of the construction problems are resolved…the construction is complete…the house or houses are built…and we move on to a new and different project.
Problem-solving and debugging are an integral part of every new housing construction project…usually from start to finish…because the same product is not repeated in large enough numbers to “build” upon past experience to the point of assembly-line perfection.
An assembly-line approach cannot be used because of the practical reality that houses are too large in size to be fully assembled at one location and then transported overland to another.
Each new house must be assembled piece by piece at its exact location on the building site…and because houses occupy a lot of space…only so many can fit on each project site.
Each new housing construction project is therefore a one-time event…limited in time duration by the total number of houses to be built at that site.
Each project is separated from other projects by the distance between building sites, the economic competition between rival construction companies, and the lack of motivation or communication channels for sharing debugging information within the industry.
New housing construction projects have only one opportunity prior to the start of the construction for proactive problem-solving.
In housing construction the trial-run phase and the actual construction are one-in-the-same operation.
In housing construction there is no trial-run debugging phase, except in production tract housing in the construction of the sales models when problems and issues are supposed to be identified and resolved before the construction of the production units begin.
But even for large tract housing projects of 200 or 300 units…being the typical maximum size for most “merchant builders”…this mass-production feature still limits the benefits of trial-run debugging to the total number of houses in each project.
In housing construction, the mass-production of identical, repetitive houses never reaches the number of tens or hundreds of thousands of smaller sized products typically manufactured within a single assembly-line building.
Builders, subcontractors, superintendents, forepersons, and tradespeople must therefore be prepared to debug the individual peculiarities on a project-by-project basis.
This requires having both a defensive and offensive game-plan to achieve success.
The needed database of debugging information can only be acquired by observation after-the-fact of mistakes and problems that actually occur as unanticipated “bugs” on a large number and wide-range of new housing construction projects.
This database of debugging information can only reach the broader housing construction industry by becoming part of the back-and-forth communication between designers and builders…breaching the proprietary barriers around this information that historically has provided competitive advantage in terms of experience and expertise.
Because designers and builders mix and “cross-breed” in their collaborations on housing construction projects…the introduction of quality-control information into the architectural and interior designs in terms of illustrations depicting what not to do…added to the details pages of the design plans…will over time spread throughout the industry.
When applicable, this information can also be added to the scope-of-work sections of building trades subcontracts, highlighting company-specific and project-specific issues that builders want to bring to the attention of the subcontractors.
Trial-run debugging that produces the benefits of the traditional mass-production assembly-line…of achieving the lowest cost-per-unit…is based upon the idea of manufacturing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of identical, repetitive products.
The artistic diversity of architectural designs is a direct result of the housing construction industry realizing long before Henry Ford’s Model-T assembly-line that fully assembled houses are too large in size to be manufactured at a single location then shipped to building sites.
Once the notion of constructing hundreds of thousands of identical, repetitive, 2,400 square-foot, three-bedroom, two bathroom houses on a mass-production assembly-line is abandoned…then the artistic diversity of innovative variations in design takes over.
From an aesthetic viewpoint this reality provides interest and variety to the design and construction of houses.
But from a manufacturing viewpoint this provides the challenge of discovering, documenting, and disseminating the debugging information that accrues exponentially by this very same innovative diversity of the variety of square-footage size, architectural style, interior finishes, and orientation on unique building sites…of each individual new house being constructed.
This is what makes perfect housing design and construction a topic of interest in the massive-sized industry of building construction.
The assembly-line debugging information gleaned from the mass-production manufacturing of tennis rackets does not carry-over to the mass-production manufacturing of a particular model of dining room table.
But the value of the initial trial-run debugging of the assembly-line for the mass-production of a particular model of tennis racket is found in the large number of identical, repetitive tennis rackets being manufactured.
Because many of the same building trades practices are used in constructing new houses that are all different in size, style, and price range…this creates one database of debugging information that is common to all new housing construction, and another database of varied debugging information that is specific to each unique building site…scattered all over the countryside.
But it is the starting reality of the large size of houses that dictates the method of assembly…and produces the reality of assembly-line debugging on housing construction projects that have a limited number of products to build and short time-spans to work with.
Before moving on…it might be good here to expand upon and summarize the concept presented in the Introduction in this book, of housing construction being different:
For housing construction projects, after all of the construction problems are resolved…the construction is complete…the house or houses are built…and we move on to a new and different project.
Problem-solving and debugging are an integral part of every new housing construction project…usually from start to finish…because the same product is not repeated in large enough numbers to “build” upon past experience to the point of assembly-line perfection.
An assembly-line approach cannot be used because of the practical reality that houses are too large in size to be fully assembled at one location and then transported overland to another.
Each new house must be assembled piece by piece at its exact location on the building site…and because houses occupy a lot of space…only so many can fit on each project site.
Each new housing construction project is therefore a one-time event…limited in time duration by the total number of houses to be built at that site.
Each project is separated from other projects by the distance between building sites, the economic competition between rival construction companies, and the lack of motivation or communication channels for sharing debugging information within the industry.
New housing construction projects have only one opportunity prior to the start of the construction for proactive problem-solving.
In housing construction the trial-run phase and the actual construction are one-in-the-same operation.
In housing construction there is no trial-run debugging phase, except in production tract housing in the construction of the sales models when problems and issues are supposed to be identified and resolved before the construction of the production units begin.
But even for large tract housing projects of 200 or 300 units…being the typical maximum size for most “merchant builders”…this mass-production feature still limits the benefits of trial-run debugging to the total number of houses in each project.
In housing construction, the mass-production of identical, repetitive houses never reaches the number of tens or hundreds of thousands of smaller sized products typically manufactured within a single assembly-line building.
Builders, subcontractors, superintendents, forepersons, and tradespeople must therefore be prepared to debug the individual peculiarities on a project-by-project basis.
This requires having both a defensive and offensive game-plan to achieve success.
The needed database of debugging information can only be acquired by observation after-the-fact of mistakes and problems that actually occur as unanticipated “bugs” on a large number and wide-range of new housing construction projects.
This database of debugging information can only reach the broader housing construction industry by becoming part of the back-and-forth communication between designers and builders…breaching the proprietary barriers around this information that historically has provided competitive advantage in terms of experience and expertise.
Because designers and builders mix and “cross-breed” in their collaborations on housing construction projects…the introduction of quality-control information into the architectural and interior designs in terms of illustrations depicting what not to do…added to the details pages of the design plans…will over time spread throughout the industry.
When applicable, this information can also be added to the scope-of-work sections of building trades subcontracts, highlighting company-specific and project-specific issues that builders want to bring to the attention of the subcontractors.
July 10, 2020
The Materialistic Parameters that Limit Conventional Life-Scripts Part 2 of 2
John Lennox tells the story about a debate with Richard Dawkins…who asked the question: “If God created you…then who created God?”
In answer to which John Lennox asked the question: “If you believe that the universe created you…then who created the universe?”
The Bible tells us that God is not a created Being, but is eternal.
Unlike the ancient fertility gods that humanity invented…derived from material things like the sun, the moon, the sky, mountains, and wild beasts…that can be reduced to idol-gods of wood, stone, or precious metals…the God of the Bible is the Creator of the universe (Gen. 1:1; Jn. 1:1-3)…and was not created by the universe…and therefore is transcendent and outside of the zero-sum reality that atheistic materialists have limited themselves to…through their closed-system philosophy.
John Lennox goes on to say that the God of the Bible is far above a mere placeholder for temporary ignorance…for atheists the invented god-of-the-gaps…conveniently impotent and therefore no threat to interfere in the humanistic course and direction they have chosen for their lives.
Lennox gets a laugh from the audience we he recites a materialistic revision of the first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the bits of the universe that we do not yet understand.”
Then he recites the correct first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1)…which says that God created everything.
If the thesis of this book is true…that the discoveries of modern science translate over into the concept in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that a brilliant God is reasonably and rationally qualified to displace our ways with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9; Mk. 8:34-37)…through God-composed journey of faith life-scripts that we willingly seek and enter into…this exposes the contrasting narrative of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking to be radically limited…in the same way that atheistic materialism limits reality and truth to the physical things in the universe that we can see and touch.
If modern science has empirically discovered complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world…so vast in scope and quantity that are beyond a materialistic explanation for their origin, existence, and tenacious functional persistence in a competitive environment…this points towards the creative brilliance of an eternal Mind existing outside of the physical universe…prior to its creation…a universe coming into being at a specific point in time…at the Big Bang.
The point of this essay is to suggest that a philosophical materialist could never preach The Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7)…because the extent of the range of possibilities for human life are…for the materialist…limited to the tenets of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
Only the non-material, eternal God of the Bible could logically and rationally say as Jesus Christ taught in The Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body more than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25)…and again: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Mt. 6:33).
This does not mean that God does not appreciate the sometimes desperate pursuit of survival…as discussed in the previous essay The Survival Mode…when Jesus adds in The Sermon on the Mount: “…your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” (Mt. 6:32).
Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity (Jn. 1:1-2)…the Creator God of everything (Jn. 1:1:3)…the eternal Word (Jn. 1:1)…the light of the world (Jn. 1:4-9)…full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14)…and the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6).
The biblical narrative stories of faith reach far above and outside of the limits of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…because their Author exists outside of the limits of the material universe.
This concept can no longer be brushed aside by modern atheism…because modern science now identifies information that requires intelligence for its origin…in the same way that information conveyed in the headlines of the New York Times newspaper cannot be explained by the limited scope and reach of the material reality…cannot be adequately and fully explained by the physics and chemistry of ink bonding to paper.
The life-scripts for Abraham, Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Hannah, Samuel, David, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Esther and Mordecai, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Joseph and Mary, John the Baptist, Peter, James, John, Philip, Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, and Paul…to name a few from the Bible…transcend above anything found in the secularism of ancient and modern cultures…because the God who crafted these life-scripts did not originate as a human invented god descended from the primeval stuff of the material universe…but rather is the God who created everything in the universe including us…and is qualified to displace our ways with His higher ways as we intelligently and rationally surrender ourselves to Him…as evidenced by the brilliance God displays in the creation of the natural world…now empirically discovered through modern science.
Finally, John Lennox in this Socrates in the City podcast…makes the staggering statement that Isaac Newton…arguably the smartest scientist in human history…considered his discoveries in science not to be a reduction in the status of the Creator God of the universe…but rather an increase in his admiration for how brilliantly the universe was ordered and structured in such a precise way.
This means that no matter how gifted, talented, educated, successful, and influential we are in this life…the Creator God of the Bible has no limit…no ceiling…no end-point in being able to craft life-scripts for people that optimize their potential to live their lives at their highest and best destinies…far above the limits of conventional thinking.
In answer to which John Lennox asked the question: “If you believe that the universe created you…then who created the universe?”
The Bible tells us that God is not a created Being, but is eternal.
Unlike the ancient fertility gods that humanity invented…derived from material things like the sun, the moon, the sky, mountains, and wild beasts…that can be reduced to idol-gods of wood, stone, or precious metals…the God of the Bible is the Creator of the universe (Gen. 1:1; Jn. 1:1-3)…and was not created by the universe…and therefore is transcendent and outside of the zero-sum reality that atheistic materialists have limited themselves to…through their closed-system philosophy.
John Lennox goes on to say that the God of the Bible is far above a mere placeholder for temporary ignorance…for atheists the invented god-of-the-gaps…conveniently impotent and therefore no threat to interfere in the humanistic course and direction they have chosen for their lives.
Lennox gets a laugh from the audience we he recites a materialistic revision of the first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the bits of the universe that we do not yet understand.”
Then he recites the correct first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1)…which says that God created everything.
If the thesis of this book is true…that the discoveries of modern science translate over into the concept in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that a brilliant God is reasonably and rationally qualified to displace our ways with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9; Mk. 8:34-37)…through God-composed journey of faith life-scripts that we willingly seek and enter into…this exposes the contrasting narrative of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking to be radically limited…in the same way that atheistic materialism limits reality and truth to the physical things in the universe that we can see and touch.
If modern science has empirically discovered complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world…so vast in scope and quantity that are beyond a materialistic explanation for their origin, existence, and tenacious functional persistence in a competitive environment…this points towards the creative brilliance of an eternal Mind existing outside of the physical universe…prior to its creation…a universe coming into being at a specific point in time…at the Big Bang.
The point of this essay is to suggest that a philosophical materialist could never preach The Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7)…because the extent of the range of possibilities for human life are…for the materialist…limited to the tenets of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
Only the non-material, eternal God of the Bible could logically and rationally say as Jesus Christ taught in The Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body more than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25)…and again: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Mt. 6:33).
This does not mean that God does not appreciate the sometimes desperate pursuit of survival…as discussed in the previous essay The Survival Mode…when Jesus adds in The Sermon on the Mount: “…your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” (Mt. 6:32).
Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity (Jn. 1:1-2)…the Creator God of everything (Jn. 1:1:3)…the eternal Word (Jn. 1:1)…the light of the world (Jn. 1:4-9)…full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14)…and the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6).
The biblical narrative stories of faith reach far above and outside of the limits of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…because their Author exists outside of the limits of the material universe.
This concept can no longer be brushed aside by modern atheism…because modern science now identifies information that requires intelligence for its origin…in the same way that information conveyed in the headlines of the New York Times newspaper cannot be explained by the limited scope and reach of the material reality…cannot be adequately and fully explained by the physics and chemistry of ink bonding to paper.
The life-scripts for Abraham, Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Hannah, Samuel, David, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Esther and Mordecai, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Joseph and Mary, John the Baptist, Peter, James, John, Philip, Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, and Paul…to name a few from the Bible…transcend above anything found in the secularism of ancient and modern cultures…because the God who crafted these life-scripts did not originate as a human invented god descended from the primeval stuff of the material universe…but rather is the God who created everything in the universe including us…and is qualified to displace our ways with His higher ways as we intelligently and rationally surrender ourselves to Him…as evidenced by the brilliance God displays in the creation of the natural world…now empirically discovered through modern science.
Finally, John Lennox in this Socrates in the City podcast…makes the staggering statement that Isaac Newton…arguably the smartest scientist in human history…considered his discoveries in science not to be a reduction in the status of the Creator God of the universe…but rather an increase in his admiration for how brilliantly the universe was ordered and structured in such a precise way.
This means that no matter how gifted, talented, educated, successful, and influential we are in this life…the Creator God of the Bible has no limit…no ceiling…no end-point in being able to craft life-scripts for people that optimize their potential to live their lives at their highest and best destinies…far above the limits of conventional thinking.
July 1, 2020
The Materialistic Parameters that Limit Conventional Life-Scripts Part 1 of 2
Atheists who fully subscribe to the worldview philosophy of naturalistic materialism…insist that everything in the universe must be reduced down to concrete physical things we can see and touch…in order to set the proper context to be able…with consistent confidence…to define the parameters of objective reality.
Anything outside of this proper context as determined by materialism…is considered to be subjective…and therefore unreliably imprecise in terms of measurement, quantification, and clear categorization…being susceptible to the undefined variables of opinion, impression, and artistic taste…and therefore suspect as to solid truth-value.
Atheists can and do take reductionism a step farther…by also subscribing to the philosophy of scientism…which asserts that real truth can only be found through the methodology of the hard sciences…through only what can be repeatedly tested in a laboratory.
These lines of thinking create a worldview reality that has finite borders…that reduces the range of possible knowledge to a narrower set of facts that can eventually max-out at an end-point number…that has fixed boundary-lines around a set quantity of factual knowledge…beyond which we cannot go.
Over the past roughly 160 years…beginning with Charles Darwin’s classic book The Origin of Species published in 1859…these four lines of thought…materialism, scientism, atheism, and what can be called hard agnosticism…have coalesced into a single narrative that has universally worked its way into popular culture…which can be broadly called secularism.
The contention of this essay is that secularism negatively limits human lifestyle options…to the narrow ranges as defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…in direct competition with the biblical narrative…in the sea of multiple competing worldviews.
Restated another way…has the godless worldview of naturalistic materialism…by its insistence on excluding any input of a Creator God who could broaden the scope of possible human life-scripts…successfully imposed upon modern cultures a narrowly restrictive choice of options for human life…confined to the realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone?
Has the secular worldview of a godless materialism permeated so thoroughly into our popular culture…that the profoundest irony has immerged in that modern science is now telling us that our universe cannot be godless…that the vast amounts of coordinated information in the natural world must have an intelligent source…to explain its existence.
The theme of this book is that the biblical narrative stories of faith exactly reveal the necessary input of a brilliantly imaginative God…composing life-scripts that reach far above and outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to the peak and pinnacle of purpose, meaning, value, and worth in human life.
The main theme of this book is that this assertion regarding the beneficial participation of the God of the Bible in the lives of people…as we might logically expect the Creator God of this universe to do…naturally parallels and intersects with the modern scientific discovery of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that likewise have an origin far above and outside of any plausible materialistic explanation…a materialistic explanation that by definition requires the complete absence of this same brilliantly imaginative God.
Borrowing again from the Socrates in the City interview of John Lennox by Eric Metaxas in Labastide, France…parts 1 and 2…in January 2018 …Eric Metaxas makes the point that the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism creates a false zero-sum game in science…where each new discovery made by science adds to the increasing database of valid human knowledge on one side of the ledger sheet…and creates an equal and opposite subtraction of human ignorance on the other side of the ledger sheet…beneficially decreasing the number of explanations of the phenomenon in nature based upon old-wives tales, superstition, black magic, witchcraft, and the unfathomable whims of the ancient gods.
Human scientific investigation is the one and only research methodology that can move the innumerable mysteries regarding the phenomenon in the natural world…from the ignorance column over to the knowledge column.
But for atheists…in a closed-system worldview consisting only of material things…the more we know about the workings of the natural world discovered through the reliability of the hard sciences…the less we need to ascribe the things we do not yet understand…to the serendipity of unknown causes…or worse yet to the creative capacity of a super-natural god we cannot materially see or touch.
This artificial, zero-sum dynamic from ignorance to knowledge…has created for the atheist the useful concept of a god-of-the-gaps explanation…of a god that does nothing else…but exists to perform the role of a temporary placeholder for ignorance…to fill-in as a “nothing burger” until scientific investigation can uncover the real, empirical truths underlying the phenomenon in nature.
Until we scientifically understood the physics of lightning…for example…in ignorance mankind historically ascribed the mystery of lightning…to be an act of god.
During the past four to five centuries of the Scientific Revolution…in the finite, closed philosophical system of naturalistic materialism…the god-of-the-gaps explanations for what we do not understand have been steadily decreasing in number…as scientific investigation solves the mysteries of the natural world…one-by-one…through the forward progression of empirical knowledge.
But in these two episodes of Socrates in the City…Lennox and Metaxas arrive at the brilliant observation that the God of the Bible is entirely unique amongst other gods…is not a material entity…is not like the gods of the ancient world descended from the primeval “stuff” of the universe…but instead is an eternal Spirit.
The problem with a zero-sum approach to judging the advancing achievements in science…is that it requires a materialistic universe having a finite total number of available, objectively knowable facts…that can be moved from the ignorance side of the ledger sheet to the knowledge side of the ledger sheet.
But a universe having a transcendent Creator God…an eternal Mind…being a living Spirit…radically differs in that this theistic worldview infinitely broadens the possible diversity of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…and broadens beyond human imagination the possible scope and diversity of the life-scripts that can be composed and orchestrated for human beings…one of the outstanding features the biblical narrative stories of faith exhibit.
Anything outside of this proper context as determined by materialism…is considered to be subjective…and therefore unreliably imprecise in terms of measurement, quantification, and clear categorization…being susceptible to the undefined variables of opinion, impression, and artistic taste…and therefore suspect as to solid truth-value.
Atheists can and do take reductionism a step farther…by also subscribing to the philosophy of scientism…which asserts that real truth can only be found through the methodology of the hard sciences…through only what can be repeatedly tested in a laboratory.
These lines of thinking create a worldview reality that has finite borders…that reduces the range of possible knowledge to a narrower set of facts that can eventually max-out at an end-point number…that has fixed boundary-lines around a set quantity of factual knowledge…beyond which we cannot go.
Over the past roughly 160 years…beginning with Charles Darwin’s classic book The Origin of Species published in 1859…these four lines of thought…materialism, scientism, atheism, and what can be called hard agnosticism…have coalesced into a single narrative that has universally worked its way into popular culture…which can be broadly called secularism.
The contention of this essay is that secularism negatively limits human lifestyle options…to the narrow ranges as defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…in direct competition with the biblical narrative…in the sea of multiple competing worldviews.
Restated another way…has the godless worldview of naturalistic materialism…by its insistence on excluding any input of a Creator God who could broaden the scope of possible human life-scripts…successfully imposed upon modern cultures a narrowly restrictive choice of options for human life…confined to the realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone?
Has the secular worldview of a godless materialism permeated so thoroughly into our popular culture…that the profoundest irony has immerged in that modern science is now telling us that our universe cannot be godless…that the vast amounts of coordinated information in the natural world must have an intelligent source…to explain its existence.
The theme of this book is that the biblical narrative stories of faith exactly reveal the necessary input of a brilliantly imaginative God…composing life-scripts that reach far above and outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to the peak and pinnacle of purpose, meaning, value, and worth in human life.
The main theme of this book is that this assertion regarding the beneficial participation of the God of the Bible in the lives of people…as we might logically expect the Creator God of this universe to do…naturally parallels and intersects with the modern scientific discovery of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that likewise have an origin far above and outside of any plausible materialistic explanation…a materialistic explanation that by definition requires the complete absence of this same brilliantly imaginative God.
Borrowing again from the Socrates in the City interview of John Lennox by Eric Metaxas in Labastide, France…parts 1 and 2…in January 2018 …Eric Metaxas makes the point that the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism creates a false zero-sum game in science…where each new discovery made by science adds to the increasing database of valid human knowledge on one side of the ledger sheet…and creates an equal and opposite subtraction of human ignorance on the other side of the ledger sheet…beneficially decreasing the number of explanations of the phenomenon in nature based upon old-wives tales, superstition, black magic, witchcraft, and the unfathomable whims of the ancient gods.
Human scientific investigation is the one and only research methodology that can move the innumerable mysteries regarding the phenomenon in the natural world…from the ignorance column over to the knowledge column.
But for atheists…in a closed-system worldview consisting only of material things…the more we know about the workings of the natural world discovered through the reliability of the hard sciences…the less we need to ascribe the things we do not yet understand…to the serendipity of unknown causes…or worse yet to the creative capacity of a super-natural god we cannot materially see or touch.
This artificial, zero-sum dynamic from ignorance to knowledge…has created for the atheist the useful concept of a god-of-the-gaps explanation…of a god that does nothing else…but exists to perform the role of a temporary placeholder for ignorance…to fill-in as a “nothing burger” until scientific investigation can uncover the real, empirical truths underlying the phenomenon in nature.
Until we scientifically understood the physics of lightning…for example…in ignorance mankind historically ascribed the mystery of lightning…to be an act of god.
During the past four to five centuries of the Scientific Revolution…in the finite, closed philosophical system of naturalistic materialism…the god-of-the-gaps explanations for what we do not understand have been steadily decreasing in number…as scientific investigation solves the mysteries of the natural world…one-by-one…through the forward progression of empirical knowledge.
But in these two episodes of Socrates in the City…Lennox and Metaxas arrive at the brilliant observation that the God of the Bible is entirely unique amongst other gods…is not a material entity…is not like the gods of the ancient world descended from the primeval “stuff” of the universe…but instead is an eternal Spirit.
The problem with a zero-sum approach to judging the advancing achievements in science…is that it requires a materialistic universe having a finite total number of available, objectively knowable facts…that can be moved from the ignorance side of the ledger sheet to the knowledge side of the ledger sheet.
But a universe having a transcendent Creator God…an eternal Mind…being a living Spirit…radically differs in that this theistic worldview infinitely broadens the possible diversity of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…and broadens beyond human imagination the possible scope and diversity of the life-scripts that can be composed and orchestrated for human beings…one of the outstanding features the biblical narrative stories of faith exhibit.
June 30, 2020
The Survival Mode Part 2 of 2
One clue that explains the need for the existence of the survival mode…is given to us in The Sermon on the Mount…when Jesus says: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Mt. 5:6)…italics mine.
Another strong clue is voiced by Samuel the prophet: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” (1 Sam. 15:23)…italics mine.
Rebellion and stubbornness can only occur in an environment having the built-in momentum of effort in the universal direction of survival…in this case of human beings possessing free-will choice amongst a sea of multiple competing options.
It would be hard for any of us to keep our sanity in a room full of two-year olds day after day…their going through the difficult development phase of the terrible two’s…of recognizing and insisting upon their newly discovered independence by saying “no” to everything suggested by an adult.
If life had a red-carpet rolled-out in front of us…providing an easy entrance…a wide, smooth, and open access to everything we desired…then our drive in pursuit of the basics for survival…much less the motivation to achieve great things…would fall flat.
Using examples from the Bible…if Abraham does not want descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky…if Joseph does not want to actualize his innate leadership abilities…if Moses does not want to perfect his perceived destiny…if David does not want to serve God as king in Israel…if Hannah does not want to provide her loving husband with children…if Esther and Mordecai do not want to save the Jews exiled in Persia…if Ezra does not want to rebuild the Temple…and if Nehemiah does not want to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem…then we would not have the inner drive that propels us to find answers to the big questions involving purpose and meaning.
Continuing on in the Bible…if Peter does not want in his heart of hearts to become a “fisher of men”…if Saul/Paul is not a seeker after truth to the radical extent that he is on his way to the city of Damascus to arrest Christians…then we again would never be motivated to discover the real truths about ourselves and the eternal Word of God…about the principles of peace and good-will in the kingdom of God…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount.
This is a reality of life that needs a better explanation…than it simply exists because it had to…that it somehow self-assembled itself out of nothing…entering dead-center into the middle of purpose and meaning…from a program of naturalistic materialism that has no purpose or meaning.
Equally important…the living natural world could not be seen as existing in a life-of-ease program driven by animal instinct…side-by-side humans encountering the challenges of life in the survival mode…utilizing cognitive thought processes.
The natural living world had to have the survival mode consistent in animal instinct…and in human reasoning.
Darwin enlisting the obvious reality in the natural living world of the survival-of-the-fittest…in his theory of macroevolution…by assuming it as a key factor without explanation…does not address the brilliantly insightful thought behind its central inclusion in the reality of existence itself.
The idea that everyone in heaven is floating around on clouds while playing harps…is false. The Intelligent Designer of the universe has not missed a thing…has included every detail…into the purpose and meaning of our world.
The survival mode keeps us on our feet and moving forward…incapable of living in an easy state of inactive lethargy…and in the case of Christians engaged in a journey of faith…hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Finally, the only thing in all of human experience that can introduce into our lives some measure of the perfection of moral character articulated by Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount…is a God-composed journey of faith life-script.
Romans 4:3 says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” The blood that Jesus shed on the cross…and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the spiritually born-again believer…closes the gap between our imperfection and the perfection of God.
God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…as patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…create a context of events and circumstances in our lives…energized by the innate, motivating fuel of the survival mode…for God to give to us some measure of His divinely unselfish love…actualized in a narrative for our lives that we could not dream up in our wildest imaginations.
This is a good point…in this book…before going on…to unpack what God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts…might look like in the modern world.
Suppose a Christian young man or young woman, part-way through undergraduate studies at a university…and coming from a family with enough money to support their education…is planning after graduation to attend law school.
Through high school and college…this young person has discovered a part of their personality that has the natural gift of excellent people skills…who has the communications facility to be able to easily interface with a broad and varied group of people…who has the quality to attract a wide circle of friends amongst fellow college students, faculty, and people back home.
What if God…through speaking to this young person in the Spirit…reveals to them that after finishing law school…He wants this young man or woman to return to the small town they grew up in…enter into politics by running for the city council…with the eventual goal of becoming the town mayor.
In the biblical narrative…this leading of God will turn-out over time to be exactly what will fulfill this person…will connect with and satisfy the deepest longing of their heart…even when and if they do not completely understand this end-point discovery at the time they first start-off on this journey.
This is different from the secular version of recognizing an innate talent and pursuing it…because this scenario matches-up the created abilities of this young person currently attending college…with a future life-script narrative coming from the God who possesses divine foresight and a Creator’s inside knowledge about what talents and abilities He placed within that person.
This is where the individualistic self-autonomy of going our own way “misses the boat” entirely.
The mindless and unguided version of the God-created survival mode…does sometimes identify our innate qualities and abilities…but this only matures into the righteousness that Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:6 in The Sermon on the Mount…when faith like that of Abraham is blended with the motivating fuel of the survival mode.
This is the explanation…in my opinion…of the survival-of-the-fittest reality enlisted brilliantly but incorrectly as an unexamined assumption into Darwin’s theory of macroevolution…having no reasoning behind its existence other than to support a materialistic worldview for the origin of the diversity of life.
A much better explanation for the existence of the survival mode is as a fundamental part of the grounding of reality itself…an existence that only God is capable of bringing into being…and that only God is capable of crafting, shaping, and channeling into the biblical narrative stories of faith…and into the lives of new covenant believers today…as an integral part of the biblical narrative in a modern world.
“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:13).
This cannot happen…without the dynamic push-and-pull impetus…the forward leaning, directional momentum…of the survival mode in operation.
Another strong clue is voiced by Samuel the prophet: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” (1 Sam. 15:23)…italics mine.
Rebellion and stubbornness can only occur in an environment having the built-in momentum of effort in the universal direction of survival…in this case of human beings possessing free-will choice amongst a sea of multiple competing options.
It would be hard for any of us to keep our sanity in a room full of two-year olds day after day…their going through the difficult development phase of the terrible two’s…of recognizing and insisting upon their newly discovered independence by saying “no” to everything suggested by an adult.
If life had a red-carpet rolled-out in front of us…providing an easy entrance…a wide, smooth, and open access to everything we desired…then our drive in pursuit of the basics for survival…much less the motivation to achieve great things…would fall flat.
Using examples from the Bible…if Abraham does not want descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky…if Joseph does not want to actualize his innate leadership abilities…if Moses does not want to perfect his perceived destiny…if David does not want to serve God as king in Israel…if Hannah does not want to provide her loving husband with children…if Esther and Mordecai do not want to save the Jews exiled in Persia…if Ezra does not want to rebuild the Temple…and if Nehemiah does not want to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem…then we would not have the inner drive that propels us to find answers to the big questions involving purpose and meaning.
Continuing on in the Bible…if Peter does not want in his heart of hearts to become a “fisher of men”…if Saul/Paul is not a seeker after truth to the radical extent that he is on his way to the city of Damascus to arrest Christians…then we again would never be motivated to discover the real truths about ourselves and the eternal Word of God…about the principles of peace and good-will in the kingdom of God…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount.
This is a reality of life that needs a better explanation…than it simply exists because it had to…that it somehow self-assembled itself out of nothing…entering dead-center into the middle of purpose and meaning…from a program of naturalistic materialism that has no purpose or meaning.
Equally important…the living natural world could not be seen as existing in a life-of-ease program driven by animal instinct…side-by-side humans encountering the challenges of life in the survival mode…utilizing cognitive thought processes.
The natural living world had to have the survival mode consistent in animal instinct…and in human reasoning.
Darwin enlisting the obvious reality in the natural living world of the survival-of-the-fittest…in his theory of macroevolution…by assuming it as a key factor without explanation…does not address the brilliantly insightful thought behind its central inclusion in the reality of existence itself.
The idea that everyone in heaven is floating around on clouds while playing harps…is false. The Intelligent Designer of the universe has not missed a thing…has included every detail…into the purpose and meaning of our world.
The survival mode keeps us on our feet and moving forward…incapable of living in an easy state of inactive lethargy…and in the case of Christians engaged in a journey of faith…hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Finally, the only thing in all of human experience that can introduce into our lives some measure of the perfection of moral character articulated by Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount…is a God-composed journey of faith life-script.
Romans 4:3 says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” The blood that Jesus shed on the cross…and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the spiritually born-again believer…closes the gap between our imperfection and the perfection of God.
God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…as patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…create a context of events and circumstances in our lives…energized by the innate, motivating fuel of the survival mode…for God to give to us some measure of His divinely unselfish love…actualized in a narrative for our lives that we could not dream up in our wildest imaginations.
This is a good point…in this book…before going on…to unpack what God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts…might look like in the modern world.
Suppose a Christian young man or young woman, part-way through undergraduate studies at a university…and coming from a family with enough money to support their education…is planning after graduation to attend law school.
Through high school and college…this young person has discovered a part of their personality that has the natural gift of excellent people skills…who has the communications facility to be able to easily interface with a broad and varied group of people…who has the quality to attract a wide circle of friends amongst fellow college students, faculty, and people back home.
What if God…through speaking to this young person in the Spirit…reveals to them that after finishing law school…He wants this young man or woman to return to the small town they grew up in…enter into politics by running for the city council…with the eventual goal of becoming the town mayor.
In the biblical narrative…this leading of God will turn-out over time to be exactly what will fulfill this person…will connect with and satisfy the deepest longing of their heart…even when and if they do not completely understand this end-point discovery at the time they first start-off on this journey.
This is different from the secular version of recognizing an innate talent and pursuing it…because this scenario matches-up the created abilities of this young person currently attending college…with a future life-script narrative coming from the God who possesses divine foresight and a Creator’s inside knowledge about what talents and abilities He placed within that person.
This is where the individualistic self-autonomy of going our own way “misses the boat” entirely.
The mindless and unguided version of the God-created survival mode…does sometimes identify our innate qualities and abilities…but this only matures into the righteousness that Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:6 in The Sermon on the Mount…when faith like that of Abraham is blended with the motivating fuel of the survival mode.
This is the explanation…in my opinion…of the survival-of-the-fittest reality enlisted brilliantly but incorrectly as an unexamined assumption into Darwin’s theory of macroevolution…having no reasoning behind its existence other than to support a materialistic worldview for the origin of the diversity of life.
A much better explanation for the existence of the survival mode is as a fundamental part of the grounding of reality itself…an existence that only God is capable of bringing into being…and that only God is capable of crafting, shaping, and channeling into the biblical narrative stories of faith…and into the lives of new covenant believers today…as an integral part of the biblical narrative in a modern world.
“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:13).
This cannot happen…without the dynamic push-and-pull impetus…the forward leaning, directional momentum…of the survival mode in operation.
June 27, 2020
The Survival Mode Part 1 of 2
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God…the Second Person of the Trinity…incarnated through a human birth to become the perfect God/man…the sinless, blemish-free Passover Lamb of God…uniquely qualified to be the atoning sacrifice for sin…to justify the free offer of forgiveness to every person who will repent and place their trust for salvation in Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:12-13)…substituting Himself in our place…making full payment on the cross for our offenses.
Numerous scriptures in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible spell this out…too numerous to cite them here…as a long list that would fill up several pages.
One of the most important statements asserting the source and origin of truth…in all of human history…is recorded in the first chapter of the New Testament gospel of John:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.
In John 11:25-26, Jesus is quoted as saying to Martha just before He raises her brother Lazarus back to life after being dead four days in a rock covered tomb: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
In response to a question by one of the twelve apostles Thomas, coming at the end of His earthly ministry: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5)…Jesus answers:
6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Then Philip…also one of the twelve apostles…asked the follow-up question: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (Jn. 14:8)…to which Jesus responds:
9 Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?
10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The foregoing sets-up the context for the singular authority of Jesus Christ the eternal Word and the Creator of everything in the universe…having therefore the first to say and the last to say on any subject in the living and non-living natural world…and in the realm of intellectual and moral reasoning…for us to then posit to Jesus the legitimately perplexing question regarding The Sermon on the Mount…the penultimate sermon that changed the thinking of mankind from the ancient world to the present day…the most detailed version of which is recorded in the gospel of Matthew chapters five through seven…the question of why this teaching by Jesus cuts so strongly against the grain of our universal, innate drive for mere survival…in this often hard and difficult life?
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus puts-out standards for human thought and behavior that are impossible for us to achieve perfectly across-the-board…for us to exhibit lives anywhere near consistently perfect performance…and in some difficult areas of our characters even be able to demonstrate mere satisfactorily mediocre performance.
Human beings are imperfect creatures…and struggling to provide food, clothing, and a roof over our heads…is a universal part of the pursuit of basic survival.
In the sea of multiple competing narratives…the route of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking places the daily expediency of procuring basic sustenance…at the top of the list of priorities.
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus rearranges this list of priorities…placing seeking the kingdom of God at the top of the list (Mt. 6:33)…and listing the beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12 as the crown jewels of an elevated moral life…the principles that define and govern His kingdom…but again unattainable through human self-effort.
Why are all human beings universally in the survival mode…trying to “keep the wolf from the door”…when the eternal Word of God Jesus Christ is telling us to: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This question lies at the deepest core of the biblical narrative option for human life…at the fork in the road leading either to going our own way…”setting up shop” in self-reliant autonomy…or choosing the other road starting at the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…of following by faith the guiding leadership of Jesus Christ as life’s only qualified tour guide.
This question…in my opinion…also utterly destroys the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism…because the mere recognition of its existence in the marketplace of ideas…of God displacing our ways with His higher ways through our willing cooperation…at the central location of one of the most risk-filled decision-points challenging every human being…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount…has no plausible explanation of origin coming from the worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of the “survival of the fittest”…of “looking out for number one”…of insuring the care of “me, myself, and I”…in terms of putting food on the table and providing a roof over our heads.
Jesus is saying here…that from the perspective of being the eternal Word of perfect truth, brilliant pure light, and absolute moral goodness…and being the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it…that we can rearrange the priority of our aims and goals regarding the imperative pursuit of food and clothing (Mt. 6:31-33) down to a lower, not all-consuming level of concern and worry.
Not only is this an important feature of the good news of the gospel message…coming from the highest authority…but it also raises a fundamental question…of why life is set-up in such a way that basic survival is a part of the reality of every living organism on earth.
What would be the reason for the existence of this common reality…of struggle for survival…in a universe assembled through a mindless and undirected process…being the godless fundamental axiom of the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism?
How and why would this competing dichotomy of two opposing narratives…of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking arguing for independent self-autonomy apart from God…contrasting sharply with a biblical-quality journey of faith…come into existence in the first place…out of a purely materialistic universe?
These are huge questions…that must at least be partially addressed in a book entitled The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
Charles Darwin, in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species…correctly identified survival-of-the-fittest…as the prime motivating engine that drives and maintains “fitness” in every living species. The controversial part of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that he hypothesized that this motivational engine…of overcoming the challenge to survival in all living organisms…could extrapolate to a broader application to be able to create entirely new species through genetic mutation and natural selection…producing constantly evolving change in pursuit of better and improved function.
But again…where does this built-in “need”…this motivating engine driving the universal pursuit for survival…come from?
Enlisting this clearly obvious reality in a theory to support the hypothetical mechanism for macroevolution…to attempt an explanation for the origin of new species…does not account…other than as a given assumption…for the existence of this supporting reality…in the first place.
Assuming the observed reality of the survival-of-the-fittest as a key factor into our equation for explaining the origin of species…does not tell us where this critically important factor comes from.
Merely plugging this factor into our theory…becomes a which-came-first dilemma of the chicken or the egg…the cart before the horse…a circular exercise in logic without an answer.
Did the materialistic universe first “need” to have survival-of-the-fittest up and running ahead of time in order to produce the evolutionary progression of the origin of species…using what would appear to be foresight…or was it the other way around…that the diversity of life somehow exploited this naturally included, driving force in the pursuit of securing survival…being an integral part of life itself…an inexplicable and not strictly necessary fuel for change…arising on its own out of nothing…without explanation?
Could not the universe and our daily experience be non-competitive and struggle-free…absent any “survival-of-the-fittest” motivational drive?
This existence of the survival-of-the-fittest goes much deeper and is far too profound to be merely the explanatory mechanism of Darwin’s theory of macroevolution.
The survival mode is a God-created reality that transcends to the peak and the pinnacle of contemplative existence.
Numerous scriptures in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible spell this out…too numerous to cite them here…as a long list that would fill up several pages.
One of the most important statements asserting the source and origin of truth…in all of human history…is recorded in the first chapter of the New Testament gospel of John:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.
In John 11:25-26, Jesus is quoted as saying to Martha just before He raises her brother Lazarus back to life after being dead four days in a rock covered tomb: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
In response to a question by one of the twelve apostles Thomas, coming at the end of His earthly ministry: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5)…Jesus answers:
6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Then Philip…also one of the twelve apostles…asked the follow-up question: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (Jn. 14:8)…to which Jesus responds:
9 Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?
10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The foregoing sets-up the context for the singular authority of Jesus Christ the eternal Word and the Creator of everything in the universe…having therefore the first to say and the last to say on any subject in the living and non-living natural world…and in the realm of intellectual and moral reasoning…for us to then posit to Jesus the legitimately perplexing question regarding The Sermon on the Mount…the penultimate sermon that changed the thinking of mankind from the ancient world to the present day…the most detailed version of which is recorded in the gospel of Matthew chapters five through seven…the question of why this teaching by Jesus cuts so strongly against the grain of our universal, innate drive for mere survival…in this often hard and difficult life?
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus puts-out standards for human thought and behavior that are impossible for us to achieve perfectly across-the-board…for us to exhibit lives anywhere near consistently perfect performance…and in some difficult areas of our characters even be able to demonstrate mere satisfactorily mediocre performance.
Human beings are imperfect creatures…and struggling to provide food, clothing, and a roof over our heads…is a universal part of the pursuit of basic survival.
In the sea of multiple competing narratives…the route of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking places the daily expediency of procuring basic sustenance…at the top of the list of priorities.
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus rearranges this list of priorities…placing seeking the kingdom of God at the top of the list (Mt. 6:33)…and listing the beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12 as the crown jewels of an elevated moral life…the principles that define and govern His kingdom…but again unattainable through human self-effort.
Why are all human beings universally in the survival mode…trying to “keep the wolf from the door”…when the eternal Word of God Jesus Christ is telling us to: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This question lies at the deepest core of the biblical narrative option for human life…at the fork in the road leading either to going our own way…”setting up shop” in self-reliant autonomy…or choosing the other road starting at the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…of following by faith the guiding leadership of Jesus Christ as life’s only qualified tour guide.
This question…in my opinion…also utterly destroys the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism…because the mere recognition of its existence in the marketplace of ideas…of God displacing our ways with His higher ways through our willing cooperation…at the central location of one of the most risk-filled decision-points challenging every human being…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount…has no plausible explanation of origin coming from the worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of the “survival of the fittest”…of “looking out for number one”…of insuring the care of “me, myself, and I”…in terms of putting food on the table and providing a roof over our heads.
Jesus is saying here…that from the perspective of being the eternal Word of perfect truth, brilliant pure light, and absolute moral goodness…and being the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it…that we can rearrange the priority of our aims and goals regarding the imperative pursuit of food and clothing (Mt. 6:31-33) down to a lower, not all-consuming level of concern and worry.
Not only is this an important feature of the good news of the gospel message…coming from the highest authority…but it also raises a fundamental question…of why life is set-up in such a way that basic survival is a part of the reality of every living organism on earth.
What would be the reason for the existence of this common reality…of struggle for survival…in a universe assembled through a mindless and undirected process…being the godless fundamental axiom of the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism?
How and why would this competing dichotomy of two opposing narratives…of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking arguing for independent self-autonomy apart from God…contrasting sharply with a biblical-quality journey of faith…come into existence in the first place…out of a purely materialistic universe?
These are huge questions…that must at least be partially addressed in a book entitled The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
Charles Darwin, in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species…correctly identified survival-of-the-fittest…as the prime motivating engine that drives and maintains “fitness” in every living species. The controversial part of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that he hypothesized that this motivational engine…of overcoming the challenge to survival in all living organisms…could extrapolate to a broader application to be able to create entirely new species through genetic mutation and natural selection…producing constantly evolving change in pursuit of better and improved function.
But again…where does this built-in “need”…this motivating engine driving the universal pursuit for survival…come from?
Enlisting this clearly obvious reality in a theory to support the hypothetical mechanism for macroevolution…to attempt an explanation for the origin of new species…does not account…other than as a given assumption…for the existence of this supporting reality…in the first place.
Assuming the observed reality of the survival-of-the-fittest as a key factor into our equation for explaining the origin of species…does not tell us where this critically important factor comes from.
Merely plugging this factor into our theory…becomes a which-came-first dilemma of the chicken or the egg…the cart before the horse…a circular exercise in logic without an answer.
Did the materialistic universe first “need” to have survival-of-the-fittest up and running ahead of time in order to produce the evolutionary progression of the origin of species…using what would appear to be foresight…or was it the other way around…that the diversity of life somehow exploited this naturally included, driving force in the pursuit of securing survival…being an integral part of life itself…an inexplicable and not strictly necessary fuel for change…arising on its own out of nothing…without explanation?
Could not the universe and our daily experience be non-competitive and struggle-free…absent any “survival-of-the-fittest” motivational drive?
This existence of the survival-of-the-fittest goes much deeper and is far too profound to be merely the explanatory mechanism of Darwin’s theory of macroevolution.
The survival mode is a God-created reality that transcends to the peak and the pinnacle of contemplative existence.
June 25, 2020
Peter Has Standing at Pentecost Part 2 of 2
Peter’s otherwise commendable but misguided intentions of preventing any physical harm coming to Jesus…leading up to the quickly unfolding events of His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and His nighttime trial…spinning instantly beyond Peter’s control (Jn. 18:10-11)…surgically divides out for us the enormous gulf between the limited impact of the conventional thinking of the “natural man”…contrasted starkly with the higher ways and thoughts of God (Isa. 55:8-9)…in which all things are possible (Mt. 19:26)…that produces the truly historical event at Pentecost recorded in Acts 2…in which Peter was a central participant.
Only God would know that the impulsive, self-reliant nature of Peter needed some radical humility…and only God is capable of integrating into Peter’s life the optimum experiences at Gethsemane and the courtyard of Caiaphas…to beneficially modify Peter’s character for the difficult and challenging days ahead.
In a God-composed journey of faith life-script…God combines benefits for ourselves individually and for others…sometimes in large numbers…in a way that transcends above time…that utilizes the divine attribute of timeless foresight to enlist us into a calling that is larger than ourselves…to do something greater than ourselves.
God is the only person who can define an eternally valid ethical framework…and He demonstrates this brilliantly at this pivotal moment in the life-script for Peter.
Standing courageously alongside Jesus at His night trial…and occupying the fourth cross on Calvary Hill the next day…was not the highest and best use of the talents of Peter. Only God could know this in advance…and orchestrate events along many parallel and intersecting paths to produce for Peter the internal change of humility needed before entering into the full-scale ministry of leading the early Christian church in Jerusalem.
By contrast…when we insist upon doing things our way…we are basically flying blind…we are living in the reactive mode…bouncing around in response to the seeming randomness of life’s events with no real idea for what we are doing…other than the worldly conventional wisdom and thinking we observe…which we attempt to import into our self-composed life-plans…”making it up as we go.”
The post-modern paradigm of relativism creates a number of options based on the self-obsession of living for ourselves…of the personal pursuit of self-gratification.
Here I am borrowing from a 1991 podcast of a lecture given at Harvard University by Chuck Colson entitled: Why Harvard Can’t Teach Ethics…produced by Break Point.
We can deceive ourselves through self-delusion and self-rationalization into thinking that we know the difference between right and wrong…but even if we know what is right we may not have the will to do the right thing.
Quoting Chuck Colson from this lecture: “Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there is not the will to do what’s right.”
Colson goes on to cite the classic biblical truth stated by Paul: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Rom. 7:19).
The worldly conventional narrative of going our own way in autonomous individualism apart from God…produces winners and losers according to the standard measurement of worldly achievement…that guarantees the creation of divisions between competing groups of people…all utilizing their differing gifts and abilities…generating separation, exclusion, bias, and prejudice.
The unimaginably delineated contrast between Peter’s failing performance in the courtyard of Caiaphas…and his incredible turn-about success at Pentecost…amplifies and highlights the unique feature of the biblical narrative of God option for human lives…that every person has the capacity to freely choose to follow God into a journey of faith…and can experience the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in their ministries and in sharing their testimony…as part of the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20…without having to be a member of any exclusive club of socially and culturally esteemed elites.
This is not a criticism of modern Christian higher education in theology. Advanced studies in biblical theology, history, and philosophy are needed to safeguard the received truths of orthodox biblical doctrines and teaching…against destructive heresies (2 Tim. 2:15).
But not being welcome into the tight circle of religious elites…before and after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ…did not prevent Peter from entering into his God-composed journey of faith life-script…speaking boldly at Pentecost and later in front of the Sanhedrin Council (Acts 4:8-13).
The higher ways and thoughts of God…make an adventure of faith like that of Peter…supernaturally guided by God…open and accessible to everyone.
At Pentecost and before the Sanhedrin Council…the Holy Spirit gave standing to Peter.
In the current sea of multiple competing options for human life…this is the difference between the worldly narrative…of going our own way in self-autonomy…contrasted sharply by the alternative Godly way of walking in the Spirit in a journey of faith…that actualizes our intrinsic worth and value into unique destinies that only God can bring into being.
This depth of intellectual and moral insight…cannot plausibly be the product of human invented, literary mythology…cannot have its origin coming from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
Peter…at Pentecost…walking within the validation of the right standing with God…enjoying the status of value, worth, and dignity…being created in the image of God…and being spiritually reborn through faith in Jesus Christ…is light-years ahead of any naturalistic worldview that produces the upside-down condition that someone with the innate potential of Peter…would have zero standing in terms of worldly status…as he mills around a fire warming himself in the courtyard of the home of Caiaphas…at the night trial of Jesus…during the most monumental four days in history.
God skillfully crafts and channels events in such a fine-tuned way…that Peter unknowingly ends-up doing the right thing…which in this case meant doing nothing…God arranging circumstances to discourage Peter from finding an opportunity to jump impulsively into the night trial of Jesus.
This shows the guiding hand of the supernatural, timeless foresight of God…that lies at the center of the biblical narrative accessible and applicable to every person today…willing to give God the benefit-of-the-doubt and place our faith and trust in Him…to take us up into higher life-scripts of truth and purpose…beyond what we can imagine, orchestrate, or contrive (Lk. 22:31-34).
Only God would know that the impulsive, self-reliant nature of Peter needed some radical humility…and only God is capable of integrating into Peter’s life the optimum experiences at Gethsemane and the courtyard of Caiaphas…to beneficially modify Peter’s character for the difficult and challenging days ahead.
In a God-composed journey of faith life-script…God combines benefits for ourselves individually and for others…sometimes in large numbers…in a way that transcends above time…that utilizes the divine attribute of timeless foresight to enlist us into a calling that is larger than ourselves…to do something greater than ourselves.
God is the only person who can define an eternally valid ethical framework…and He demonstrates this brilliantly at this pivotal moment in the life-script for Peter.
Standing courageously alongside Jesus at His night trial…and occupying the fourth cross on Calvary Hill the next day…was not the highest and best use of the talents of Peter. Only God could know this in advance…and orchestrate events along many parallel and intersecting paths to produce for Peter the internal change of humility needed before entering into the full-scale ministry of leading the early Christian church in Jerusalem.
By contrast…when we insist upon doing things our way…we are basically flying blind…we are living in the reactive mode…bouncing around in response to the seeming randomness of life’s events with no real idea for what we are doing…other than the worldly conventional wisdom and thinking we observe…which we attempt to import into our self-composed life-plans…”making it up as we go.”
The post-modern paradigm of relativism creates a number of options based on the self-obsession of living for ourselves…of the personal pursuit of self-gratification.
Here I am borrowing from a 1991 podcast of a lecture given at Harvard University by Chuck Colson entitled: Why Harvard Can’t Teach Ethics…produced by Break Point.
We can deceive ourselves through self-delusion and self-rationalization into thinking that we know the difference between right and wrong…but even if we know what is right we may not have the will to do the right thing.
Quoting Chuck Colson from this lecture: “Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there is not the will to do what’s right.”
Colson goes on to cite the classic biblical truth stated by Paul: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Rom. 7:19).
The worldly conventional narrative of going our own way in autonomous individualism apart from God…produces winners and losers according to the standard measurement of worldly achievement…that guarantees the creation of divisions between competing groups of people…all utilizing their differing gifts and abilities…generating separation, exclusion, bias, and prejudice.
The unimaginably delineated contrast between Peter’s failing performance in the courtyard of Caiaphas…and his incredible turn-about success at Pentecost…amplifies and highlights the unique feature of the biblical narrative of God option for human lives…that every person has the capacity to freely choose to follow God into a journey of faith…and can experience the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in their ministries and in sharing their testimony…as part of the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20…without having to be a member of any exclusive club of socially and culturally esteemed elites.
This is not a criticism of modern Christian higher education in theology. Advanced studies in biblical theology, history, and philosophy are needed to safeguard the received truths of orthodox biblical doctrines and teaching…against destructive heresies (2 Tim. 2:15).
But not being welcome into the tight circle of religious elites…before and after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ…did not prevent Peter from entering into his God-composed journey of faith life-script…speaking boldly at Pentecost and later in front of the Sanhedrin Council (Acts 4:8-13).
The higher ways and thoughts of God…make an adventure of faith like that of Peter…supernaturally guided by God…open and accessible to everyone.
At Pentecost and before the Sanhedrin Council…the Holy Spirit gave standing to Peter.
In the current sea of multiple competing options for human life…this is the difference between the worldly narrative…of going our own way in self-autonomy…contrasted sharply by the alternative Godly way of walking in the Spirit in a journey of faith…that actualizes our intrinsic worth and value into unique destinies that only God can bring into being.
This depth of intellectual and moral insight…cannot plausibly be the product of human invented, literary mythology…cannot have its origin coming from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
Peter…at Pentecost…walking within the validation of the right standing with God…enjoying the status of value, worth, and dignity…being created in the image of God…and being spiritually reborn through faith in Jesus Christ…is light-years ahead of any naturalistic worldview that produces the upside-down condition that someone with the innate potential of Peter…would have zero standing in terms of worldly status…as he mills around a fire warming himself in the courtyard of the home of Caiaphas…at the night trial of Jesus…during the most monumental four days in history.
God skillfully crafts and channels events in such a fine-tuned way…that Peter unknowingly ends-up doing the right thing…which in this case meant doing nothing…God arranging circumstances to discourage Peter from finding an opportunity to jump impulsively into the night trial of Jesus.
This shows the guiding hand of the supernatural, timeless foresight of God…that lies at the center of the biblical narrative accessible and applicable to every person today…willing to give God the benefit-of-the-doubt and place our faith and trust in Him…to take us up into higher life-scripts of truth and purpose…beyond what we can imagine, orchestrate, or contrive (Lk. 22:31-34).
June 24, 2020
Peter Has Standing at Pentecost Part 1 of 2
The commendably courageous assertion by Peter in the mount of Olives…after the Lord’s Supper on the night before the crucifixion of Jesus…when Peter said: “Although all shall be offended, yet will not I” (Mk. 14:29)…after which Jesus tells Peter that after the night is over Peter will have denied Jesus three times…the scripture records that Peter replied vehemently: “If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise.” (Mk. 14:31).
All four New Testament gospels then record the denial by Peter of Jesus…in painful detail…that eventful night in the courtyard of the home of Caiaphas the high priest (Mt. 26:69-75; Mk. 14:66-72; Lk. 22:54-62; Jn. 18:15-18, 25-27).
One huge take-away here in terms of the biblical narrative in a modern world…is that Peter that night had no worldly standing…no impressive credentials…no resume of great accomplishments…no list of important political connections…but was a mere common fisherman from Galilee…a financial and political nobody in the eyes of Caiaphas and the powerful religious leaders of Jerusalem…having no special standing for Peter to rely upon to credibly occupy a place alongside Jesus at His night trial…to wield any persuasive impact whatsoever over these well-educated and influential men…who had already made up their minds in advance to condemn Jesus.
No amount of brilliant oratory based upon an appeal to the very best of worldly practical, conventional normalcy and thinking…delivered that night by anyone less powerful than a visiting Roman Governor, a member of the Roman senate, or a Roman military general on behalf of Jesus…could have swayed these men to release Jesus unharmed.
Even a passionate appeal in defense of Jesus…delivered by Jews who had standing and influence…like Nicodemus (Jn. 3:1) or Joseph of Arimathaea (Lk. 23:50-51)…would have fallen on deaf ears.
Which was by the deliberate, premeditated intention of God all along (Jn. 19:11; Acts 2:23)…because Jesus Christ the Son of God…the Second Person of the Trinity…is also the blemish-free Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sin…”slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8)…the ram caught by the horns in the thicket, for sacrifice in place of Isaac, that Abraham unknowingly foretold in-the-moment that God Himself would someday provide (Gen. 22:8, 13)…the God/man come down from heaven for this very thing (Mt. 26:53-54; Jn. 12:27, 18:11)…and described in the timeless prophetic foresight of Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and the other Old Testament messianic scriptures…looking ahead over many centuries to the cross on Calvary Hill.
The non-existent worldly standing of the lowly Galilean Peter was of no real significance that night at the house and courtyard of Caiaphas…because the higher ways of God for Jesus the next day was to be crucified early in the morning and to die upon the cross at the traditional time on that Friday afternoon that the Passover lambs were killed…then raising Jesus from the dead three days later on Easter Sunday morning.
The release of Jesus during His night trial through a courageous stand of solidarity by one or more of His outspoken disciples…was not in the eternal plans of God for the redemption and salvation of mankind.
If Peter was able to muster the courage to make an ill-advised, desperate defense alongside Jesus that night…Peter would have needlessly occupied a fourth cross on Calvary Hill the next day…accomplishing nothing and nullifying his future destiny.
The first traditional understanding by Christians of this story of Peter’s utter failure in the courtyard of Caiaphas…of contemplating the orchestration of a defense of Jesus as events unfolded…even failing amongst common people standing around a fire…is that at that moment Peter was operating on his own in the flesh…through the natural man…through self-powered thinking (1 Cor. 2:14)…and not through the power of the Holy Spirit…as Peter should have known and exhibited under fire…being a disciple of Jesus (Acts 4:13).
This was an invaluable lesson learned the hard-way through this bitter failure that Peter had to experience…before he was ready to capably step into the leadership of the early Christian church…soon to explode supernaturally into being in the hostile environment of Jerusalem… through the power of the Holy Spirit…the lesson for Peter and the other disciples to listen and to walk in the Spirit…and not in the natural mind of our own ways and thoughts.
A second, classic take-away that should be recognizable to Christians is that this group of Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes meeting at the house of the high priest Caiaphas that night…was an exclusive club of elites that would never admit Peter as an equal member…would not grant a lower class commoner like Peter the basic respect and dignity…to have a voice that night in defense of Jesus…which ordinarily would have been the case had these judicial proceedings been held during normal, daytime hours…and not at the highly illegal and unprecedented time under Jewish law…hastily assembled late at night at the private residence of the high priest.
But the third take-away for me is the most instructive…because it reintroduces at the critical point in time the displacement element that is common to all of the biblical narrative stories of faith…of a much smarter God brilliantly displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts in crafting a much better storyline…a storyline that a few short months later at Pentecost (Acts 2) has Peter experiencing the dramatic turnaround of the highest standing attainable in all of the created universe…and in all of heaven itself…at the peak and pinnacle of personal credibility and validation…at the level of uninhibited boldness of liberated love that casts out all fear (1 Jn. 4:18)…produced through the authority of true conviction…of being trusted by God with a priceless message to the world…empowered correctly through the divine anointing of the Holy Spirit.
At Pentecost…Peter and the other disciples were “filled with the Holy Ghost”…along with roughly three thousand people (Acts 2:41) who were also anointed by the Holy Ghost beforehand…prepared in advance amongst a larger-sized crowd to hear with open ears and open hearts the preaching of Peter…who were convicted of their sins and responded in repentance…which can only occur through the working of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 10:14-15).
Unlike at the courtyard of Caiaphas during the nighttime trial of Jesus…at Pentecost Peter exercised a standing that is not conferred through the consensus of worldly conventional status…of elevated social, financial, or political position…but comes about instead solely through the higher ways and thoughts of God…from the divinely confirmed route of walking in the Spirit (Mic. 6:8; Zech. 4:6)…that transcends above the wisdom of this world (1 Cor. 2:4-12).
Peter searching for a way to help-out God as he and John walked stealthily behind the mob conducting Jesus to the house of Caiaphas the high priest…by some way at the appropriate time coming forth to courageously stand alongside Jesus at His nighttime trial…is similar to Abraham and Sarah trying to help-out God in the debacle of Hagar and Ishmael (Gen. 16:2)…or Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison trying to move along the fulfillment of his two earlier dreams by enlisting the help of Pharaoh’s butler and baker to procure his release (Gen. 40:14-15)…or Moses prematurely killing the Egyptian in hopes that the Israelites would recognize Moses as their deliverer (Acts 7:25)…or Gideon assembling too large of an army (Jud. 7:2)…to name only a few examples.
What does this say about God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts...as recorded in the biblical narrative stories of faith?
All four New Testament gospels then record the denial by Peter of Jesus…in painful detail…that eventful night in the courtyard of the home of Caiaphas the high priest (Mt. 26:69-75; Mk. 14:66-72; Lk. 22:54-62; Jn. 18:15-18, 25-27).
One huge take-away here in terms of the biblical narrative in a modern world…is that Peter that night had no worldly standing…no impressive credentials…no resume of great accomplishments…no list of important political connections…but was a mere common fisherman from Galilee…a financial and political nobody in the eyes of Caiaphas and the powerful religious leaders of Jerusalem…having no special standing for Peter to rely upon to credibly occupy a place alongside Jesus at His night trial…to wield any persuasive impact whatsoever over these well-educated and influential men…who had already made up their minds in advance to condemn Jesus.
No amount of brilliant oratory based upon an appeal to the very best of worldly practical, conventional normalcy and thinking…delivered that night by anyone less powerful than a visiting Roman Governor, a member of the Roman senate, or a Roman military general on behalf of Jesus…could have swayed these men to release Jesus unharmed.
Even a passionate appeal in defense of Jesus…delivered by Jews who had standing and influence…like Nicodemus (Jn. 3:1) or Joseph of Arimathaea (Lk. 23:50-51)…would have fallen on deaf ears.
Which was by the deliberate, premeditated intention of God all along (Jn. 19:11; Acts 2:23)…because Jesus Christ the Son of God…the Second Person of the Trinity…is also the blemish-free Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sin…”slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8)…the ram caught by the horns in the thicket, for sacrifice in place of Isaac, that Abraham unknowingly foretold in-the-moment that God Himself would someday provide (Gen. 22:8, 13)…the God/man come down from heaven for this very thing (Mt. 26:53-54; Jn. 12:27, 18:11)…and described in the timeless prophetic foresight of Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and the other Old Testament messianic scriptures…looking ahead over many centuries to the cross on Calvary Hill.
The non-existent worldly standing of the lowly Galilean Peter was of no real significance that night at the house and courtyard of Caiaphas…because the higher ways of God for Jesus the next day was to be crucified early in the morning and to die upon the cross at the traditional time on that Friday afternoon that the Passover lambs were killed…then raising Jesus from the dead three days later on Easter Sunday morning.
The release of Jesus during His night trial through a courageous stand of solidarity by one or more of His outspoken disciples…was not in the eternal plans of God for the redemption and salvation of mankind.
If Peter was able to muster the courage to make an ill-advised, desperate defense alongside Jesus that night…Peter would have needlessly occupied a fourth cross on Calvary Hill the next day…accomplishing nothing and nullifying his future destiny.
The first traditional understanding by Christians of this story of Peter’s utter failure in the courtyard of Caiaphas…of contemplating the orchestration of a defense of Jesus as events unfolded…even failing amongst common people standing around a fire…is that at that moment Peter was operating on his own in the flesh…through the natural man…through self-powered thinking (1 Cor. 2:14)…and not through the power of the Holy Spirit…as Peter should have known and exhibited under fire…being a disciple of Jesus (Acts 4:13).
This was an invaluable lesson learned the hard-way through this bitter failure that Peter had to experience…before he was ready to capably step into the leadership of the early Christian church…soon to explode supernaturally into being in the hostile environment of Jerusalem… through the power of the Holy Spirit…the lesson for Peter and the other disciples to listen and to walk in the Spirit…and not in the natural mind of our own ways and thoughts.
A second, classic take-away that should be recognizable to Christians is that this group of Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes meeting at the house of the high priest Caiaphas that night…was an exclusive club of elites that would never admit Peter as an equal member…would not grant a lower class commoner like Peter the basic respect and dignity…to have a voice that night in defense of Jesus…which ordinarily would have been the case had these judicial proceedings been held during normal, daytime hours…and not at the highly illegal and unprecedented time under Jewish law…hastily assembled late at night at the private residence of the high priest.
But the third take-away for me is the most instructive…because it reintroduces at the critical point in time the displacement element that is common to all of the biblical narrative stories of faith…of a much smarter God brilliantly displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts in crafting a much better storyline…a storyline that a few short months later at Pentecost (Acts 2) has Peter experiencing the dramatic turnaround of the highest standing attainable in all of the created universe…and in all of heaven itself…at the peak and pinnacle of personal credibility and validation…at the level of uninhibited boldness of liberated love that casts out all fear (1 Jn. 4:18)…produced through the authority of true conviction…of being trusted by God with a priceless message to the world…empowered correctly through the divine anointing of the Holy Spirit.
At Pentecost…Peter and the other disciples were “filled with the Holy Ghost”…along with roughly three thousand people (Acts 2:41) who were also anointed by the Holy Ghost beforehand…prepared in advance amongst a larger-sized crowd to hear with open ears and open hearts the preaching of Peter…who were convicted of their sins and responded in repentance…which can only occur through the working of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 10:14-15).
Unlike at the courtyard of Caiaphas during the nighttime trial of Jesus…at Pentecost Peter exercised a standing that is not conferred through the consensus of worldly conventional status…of elevated social, financial, or political position…but comes about instead solely through the higher ways and thoughts of God…from the divinely confirmed route of walking in the Spirit (Mic. 6:8; Zech. 4:6)…that transcends above the wisdom of this world (1 Cor. 2:4-12).
Peter searching for a way to help-out God as he and John walked stealthily behind the mob conducting Jesus to the house of Caiaphas the high priest…by some way at the appropriate time coming forth to courageously stand alongside Jesus at His nighttime trial…is similar to Abraham and Sarah trying to help-out God in the debacle of Hagar and Ishmael (Gen. 16:2)…or Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison trying to move along the fulfillment of his two earlier dreams by enlisting the help of Pharaoh’s butler and baker to procure his release (Gen. 40:14-15)…or Moses prematurely killing the Egyptian in hopes that the Israelites would recognize Moses as their deliverer (Acts 7:25)…or Gideon assembling too large of an army (Jud. 7:2)…to name only a few examples.
What does this say about God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts...as recorded in the biblical narrative stories of faith?
June 23, 2020
The Biblical Narrative Part 10 of 10
At this time in human history…God is allowing the upsetting of the delicate balance between belief and unbelief…slowly but steadily weighted in favor of the God narrative…which has never occurred within a similar cultural environment like today.
When the authority of human scientific research may be found to be making the case for the existence of the extreme brilliance of the Intelligent Designer of the universe…arguing amazingly against the humanism it has been indirectly supporting for the last roughly 160 years…as stated above…this new development overlapping into the credibility of assigning the authority of the biblical narrative stories of faith to the creative genius of God…may turn out to surpass in magnitude the Protestant Reformation of 500 years ago.
Certainly, scientific fact-based evidence inserting itself into the divinely crafted, delicate balance between belief and unbelief…after thousands of years in existence being tweaked and adjusted to maintain equal balance…this new reality can in the truest sense be termed “breaking news.”
The larger point here is not some cultural battle over elevating the empirical authority of the trusted word of our medical doctor…for example…over and above placing our faith and trust in the authority of the word of our church pastor or youth director.
In a biblical narrative story of faith…our God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts take precedence over everything and everyone…coming from the highest authority…the Intelligent Designer God of the universe.
Will the God of the Bible lead and guide us like He did with the people of faith in the biblical narrative stories of faith?
That is the stated intention of God as recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34…that believers will all know Him from the least to the greatest…which cannot happen outside of a God-composed journey of faith life-script that ingeniously displaces our ways…our life-plans…with God’s higher ways and thoughts.
Pastors and ministers of the gospel do not have to compete with scientists over who has the most credibility and authority in our modern culture…in a false choice between faith and science…because faith and science coalesce into one…as our understanding of both faith and science increases…identifying God as the only Person qualified to compose our life-scripts.
I would like to add three brief thoughts before closing-out this introduction.
First, if human life was a blank canvas for painting a picture…and we see the incredible beauty and magnificence of the cosmos filled with galaxies, this earth, and the diversity of life within its varied ecosystems…it would be reasonable to assume that the God who created all of this could also paint a beautiful portrait of our lives…if we would let Him.
But in the Garden of Eden mankind basically took away the paint brush and the palette of colors…and said: “No, we will paint this portrait of our lives ourselves…on our own.”
The biblical narrative stories of faith are examples where God was able to paint the life-stories of people willing to hand over to Him the brush and paint colors…by faith trusting that He is a better artist than we are.
Second, today’s Christians should no longer be suspicious of science. The truth of the existence of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world…now eliminates the plausibility of naturalistic explanations for the origin and operation of the phenomenon in the living and non-living natural world…returning us slowly to the pre-Darwin period where belief and unbelief were balanced between moral, metaphysical decisions…unweighted by atheistic materialism claiming the support of science on its side.
Third, there is absolutely nothing in the biblical narrative worldview that blocks people from choosing to strive to be the best people they can be…to live their best lives…because the biblical narrative equation for life does not aim for the wrong mountaintop…does not include in its program the narrowly limited access to wealth, fame, or power…to achieve our true and genuine destiny…when we have God’s help walking jointly through a journey of faith.
This is The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isa. 2:2-3)
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Unto him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)
When the authority of human scientific research may be found to be making the case for the existence of the extreme brilliance of the Intelligent Designer of the universe…arguing amazingly against the humanism it has been indirectly supporting for the last roughly 160 years…as stated above…this new development overlapping into the credibility of assigning the authority of the biblical narrative stories of faith to the creative genius of God…may turn out to surpass in magnitude the Protestant Reformation of 500 years ago.
Certainly, scientific fact-based evidence inserting itself into the divinely crafted, delicate balance between belief and unbelief…after thousands of years in existence being tweaked and adjusted to maintain equal balance…this new reality can in the truest sense be termed “breaking news.”
The larger point here is not some cultural battle over elevating the empirical authority of the trusted word of our medical doctor…for example…over and above placing our faith and trust in the authority of the word of our church pastor or youth director.
In a biblical narrative story of faith…our God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts take precedence over everything and everyone…coming from the highest authority…the Intelligent Designer God of the universe.
Will the God of the Bible lead and guide us like He did with the people of faith in the biblical narrative stories of faith?
That is the stated intention of God as recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34…that believers will all know Him from the least to the greatest…which cannot happen outside of a God-composed journey of faith life-script that ingeniously displaces our ways…our life-plans…with God’s higher ways and thoughts.
Pastors and ministers of the gospel do not have to compete with scientists over who has the most credibility and authority in our modern culture…in a false choice between faith and science…because faith and science coalesce into one…as our understanding of both faith and science increases…identifying God as the only Person qualified to compose our life-scripts.
I would like to add three brief thoughts before closing-out this introduction.
First, if human life was a blank canvas for painting a picture…and we see the incredible beauty and magnificence of the cosmos filled with galaxies, this earth, and the diversity of life within its varied ecosystems…it would be reasonable to assume that the God who created all of this could also paint a beautiful portrait of our lives…if we would let Him.
But in the Garden of Eden mankind basically took away the paint brush and the palette of colors…and said: “No, we will paint this portrait of our lives ourselves…on our own.”
The biblical narrative stories of faith are examples where God was able to paint the life-stories of people willing to hand over to Him the brush and paint colors…by faith trusting that He is a better artist than we are.
Second, today’s Christians should no longer be suspicious of science. The truth of the existence of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world…now eliminates the plausibility of naturalistic explanations for the origin and operation of the phenomenon in the living and non-living natural world…returning us slowly to the pre-Darwin period where belief and unbelief were balanced between moral, metaphysical decisions…unweighted by atheistic materialism claiming the support of science on its side.
Third, there is absolutely nothing in the biblical narrative worldview that blocks people from choosing to strive to be the best people they can be…to live their best lives…because the biblical narrative equation for life does not aim for the wrong mountaintop…does not include in its program the narrowly limited access to wealth, fame, or power…to achieve our true and genuine destiny…when we have God’s help walking jointly through a journey of faith.
This is The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isa. 2:2-3)
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Unto him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)
June 22, 2020
The Biblical Narrative Part 9 of 10
But God does not include all of the information of this journey of faith, mission-plan for Abraham upfront at the initiation of his calling.
God judiciously leaves out the part of the last-minute, aborted sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah (Gen. 22:6-13)…setting-up the monumental foreglimpse of the substitutional sacrifice for sin…taking our place (Ps. 22; Isa. 53:5-6)…a divinely crated foreglimpse of the Passover Lamb of God…Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary…roughly two thousand years later (Jn. 8:56).
Without exception, every person of faith in the biblical narrative stories of faith…chooses to follow God…even though not all of them have a clear calling upfront like Abraham…and all do not have a full understanding of everything God is doing in their lives as events are unfolding.
This is the point at which…in the marketplace of ideas…a central tenet in the Bible that has always been there…is pushed forward into the limelight…by the modern results of the human scientific investigation of the natural world…that isolates-out and places it at the front edge of the theater stage…to voice a key truth to the world’s audience…that takes the biblical statement that the just shall live by faith…to its modern end-point fulfillment…that again in my opinion surpasses in magnitude the impact of the inspirational revelation about faith versus works in Christian salvation and discipleship…that was rediscovered and reintroduced into human history by Martin Luther…that ignited the Protestant Reformation.
The key point…the central tenet in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that is activated within God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…is that God displaces our ways with His higher ways…for the highest, noblest, and most unselfishly love-filled reasons…precisely because He alone possesses the best ways of doing things…at the peak and the pinnacle of perfect precision.
Satan’s alluring temptation in the Garden of Eden: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5)…is a half-truth…is a false narrative…is an alluring distraction…to go in the wrong direction.
Humanity now has the knowledge of good and evil…but we lack the key complimentary components of timeless foresight and perfect moral goodness.
Only the God of the Bible possesses all three of these coordinated attributes.
Of course God…given the opportunity…will in loving intentions displace our ways with His ways…when we surrender and yield ourselves to His leadership…because He is the same Intelligent Designer who crafted and channeled the inconceivably vast amounts of information in the natural world…into a coherently functional and brilliantly coordinated system…that astonishes and captures the admiration of prolific intelligent designers like ourselves…the end-point, modern-day conclusion of five-hundred years of intensive scientific investigation into the workings of the natural world.
In 1859, the viability of naturalistic materialism as an explanation for the phenomenon in the natural world…was still an open possibility in terms of the reach of our scientific knowledge.
Today, this is no longer the case.
The evidence from modern science…involving complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that excludes naturalistic materialism and points clearly to the need for design…now amazingly through science is on an equivalent magnitude of revelation to Jesus walking down Main Street and into the Temple in Jerusalem…three or four days after His resurrection on Easter Sunday morning…providing the empirical evidence…sought by atheists and agnostics for thousands of years…yet coming now from the most unexpected direction imaginable…the human scientific investigation of the natural world…conducted independently by ourselves through the autonomy of self-directed research…that leads back full-circle to the eternal truth that was always there to discover.
The God of the Bible has not only revealed to humanity through the openness and intelligibility of the natural world…through modern scientific investigation…the empirical evidence of His existence…but also the inside information into the artistry and competence of His creative abilities.
At the deepest level of the truth of: “love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (1Cor. 13:4)…God has created this entire universe, our planet earth, the tens of millions of living species, and human beings created in His image…so that God could set-up the context wherein He can make the case for His competence, reliability, and character…as the eternal King and Ruler…through the most sublime demonstration of self-effacing, love-filled humility in action.
Now like never before…this translates into an elevated appreciation of the biblical narrative stories of faith life-scripts…composed by the same Intelligent Designer God who created the natural world…now supported by modern science in our new understanding in this Age of Information…of complex, highly specified, and ingeniously integrated systems of information…prolific within the living and non-living natural world…which we did not possess 50, 100, or 160 years ago…at the time of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
God judiciously leaves out the part of the last-minute, aborted sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah (Gen. 22:6-13)…setting-up the monumental foreglimpse of the substitutional sacrifice for sin…taking our place (Ps. 22; Isa. 53:5-6)…a divinely crated foreglimpse of the Passover Lamb of God…Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary…roughly two thousand years later (Jn. 8:56).
Without exception, every person of faith in the biblical narrative stories of faith…chooses to follow God…even though not all of them have a clear calling upfront like Abraham…and all do not have a full understanding of everything God is doing in their lives as events are unfolding.
This is the point at which…in the marketplace of ideas…a central tenet in the Bible that has always been there…is pushed forward into the limelight…by the modern results of the human scientific investigation of the natural world…that isolates-out and places it at the front edge of the theater stage…to voice a key truth to the world’s audience…that takes the biblical statement that the just shall live by faith…to its modern end-point fulfillment…that again in my opinion surpasses in magnitude the impact of the inspirational revelation about faith versus works in Christian salvation and discipleship…that was rediscovered and reintroduced into human history by Martin Luther…that ignited the Protestant Reformation.
The key point…the central tenet in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that is activated within God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…is that God displaces our ways with His higher ways…for the highest, noblest, and most unselfishly love-filled reasons…precisely because He alone possesses the best ways of doing things…at the peak and the pinnacle of perfect precision.
Satan’s alluring temptation in the Garden of Eden: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5)…is a half-truth…is a false narrative…is an alluring distraction…to go in the wrong direction.
Humanity now has the knowledge of good and evil…but we lack the key complimentary components of timeless foresight and perfect moral goodness.
Only the God of the Bible possesses all three of these coordinated attributes.
Of course God…given the opportunity…will in loving intentions displace our ways with His ways…when we surrender and yield ourselves to His leadership…because He is the same Intelligent Designer who crafted and channeled the inconceivably vast amounts of information in the natural world…into a coherently functional and brilliantly coordinated system…that astonishes and captures the admiration of prolific intelligent designers like ourselves…the end-point, modern-day conclusion of five-hundred years of intensive scientific investigation into the workings of the natural world.
In 1859, the viability of naturalistic materialism as an explanation for the phenomenon in the natural world…was still an open possibility in terms of the reach of our scientific knowledge.
Today, this is no longer the case.
The evidence from modern science…involving complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that excludes naturalistic materialism and points clearly to the need for design…now amazingly through science is on an equivalent magnitude of revelation to Jesus walking down Main Street and into the Temple in Jerusalem…three or four days after His resurrection on Easter Sunday morning…providing the empirical evidence…sought by atheists and agnostics for thousands of years…yet coming now from the most unexpected direction imaginable…the human scientific investigation of the natural world…conducted independently by ourselves through the autonomy of self-directed research…that leads back full-circle to the eternal truth that was always there to discover.
The God of the Bible has not only revealed to humanity through the openness and intelligibility of the natural world…through modern scientific investigation…the empirical evidence of His existence…but also the inside information into the artistry and competence of His creative abilities.
At the deepest level of the truth of: “love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (1Cor. 13:4)…God has created this entire universe, our planet earth, the tens of millions of living species, and human beings created in His image…so that God could set-up the context wherein He can make the case for His competence, reliability, and character…as the eternal King and Ruler…through the most sublime demonstration of self-effacing, love-filled humility in action.
Now like never before…this translates into an elevated appreciation of the biblical narrative stories of faith life-scripts…composed by the same Intelligent Designer God who created the natural world…now supported by modern science in our new understanding in this Age of Information…of complex, highly specified, and ingeniously integrated systems of information…prolific within the living and non-living natural world…which we did not possess 50, 100, or 160 years ago…at the time of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
June 21, 2020
The Biblical Narrative Part 8 of 10
Proverbs 3:5-6 takes on a new significance in our modern world…if God is shown to actualize the same high-quality of precision in composing, initiating, and managing life-script callings modeled for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…steeped in purpose and meaning…as He exhibits in the complex, specified, and precisely coordinated systems of information that science has recently uncovered in the living and non-living natural world.
The light that human scientific investigation now shines on the coordination of complex systems of information in the natural world…very similar to our own pursuit of perfect, error-free creations such as computer software language code for word-processing and spreadsheet applications…and space shuttle missions that return safely to earth…this recognition of the required intelligence component within complex systems of information…lifts our appreciation of the natural world up and out of the lower level of the now archaic, mindless and unguided naturalistic explanations for the workings of the natural world…up into the more plausible and rational explanation of the agency of an Intelligent Designer…even when His precise creative methods (Gen. 1:3) appear at this time to not be amenable to human scientific investigation.
The sheer brilliance of the introduction, arrangement, and sequence of the information needed to select the right number and types of chemicals in the right quantities…to carefully mix these in the right sequential order for the correct time-periods and at the right temperatures…to produce the actual origin of life in the complete and functional form of living, replicating cells of the highest complexity and integration of parts…can no longer be plausibly attributed to occur through the purely naturalistic means of accidentally lucky, undirected chance.
If we then extend the recognition of this same intellectual and artistic brilliance over to the composition of the biblical narrative stories of faith…we discover a perfect fit with the truth, reliability, and application of the Bible to modern life…that was always there in timeless relevance in the scriptures…that in my opinion now even exceeds the magnitude of Martin Luther’s discovery in scripture that “the just shall live by faith”…that propelled the start of the culturally monumental and theologically liberating Protestant Reformation.
Hard-core biblical skeptics incorrectly want Jesus Christ…on Tuesday or Wednesday of the first week following His resurrection on Easter morning…to walk openly down the middle of Main Street in broad daylight and straight into the Temple in Jerusalem…thus initiating a widespread, empirically undeniable proof for His claim to be the Son of God…on the same level that we popularly recognize that two-plus-two equals four…or that the nonday sun exists.
The fundamental shortcoming of this insistence by skeptics of the Bible…is that it creates no context…no milieu…no environment of life events and circumstances to create a personal relationship between God and people…within the mere factual consensus that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead.
It would substitute the wrong type of empirical facts in place of the correct type of empirical facts…the correct type being discovered through the lived experience of a journey of faith…rather than a fleeting assent to a visual observation…then going about our lives as before.
It removes the critical element of tension…of suspense over time regarding future outcomes…from our life-stories…that creates the context for faith to actualize into the mature, intimate, personal relationship of trust between God and people…the same as occurs in human relationships.
There is also no moral component…no merit…to acknowledging the existence of the noonday sun…or the truth that two-plus-two equals four…and not three or five…other than the correlation to the truth of the accuracy of our information.
Acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the Son of God through empirical, observational fact…has no change-of-character impact upon the worldly conventional narrative…has no course-correction in our decision to go our own way…as autonomous, self-reliant junior gods…sitting atop the thrones of our lives.
Seeing the resurrected Jesus walking openly down Main Street in Jerusalem…visually with our eyes…does not change our resolve to live our lives our way without “interference” from God…any more than seeing Jesus raise Lazarus to life after being four days dead in a rock covered tomb…changed the thinking of the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers…and a few days later in that same week…thoroughly and with finality rejecting Jesus…cruelling mocking Him as He hung dying on the cross (Mt. 27:39-44).
The decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives…to choose to follow Him…is a moral choice involving faith…at the center of personal relationships.
A personal relationship has the elements of mutual faith and trust…and this is where the modern recognition and elevated appreciation of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…revolutionizes our understanding of purpose and meaning for today’s Christians…and for sharing the gospel message to non-Christians.
It isn’t merely that the just shall live by faith…thereby clarifying and removing the injurious toxicity of the false doctrine of self-salvation…through the human invented performance of the good-works of indulgences, venerating relics, and making pilgrimages to holy sites…for the sole purpose of raising money for the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1500’s…exposed by Martin Luther at the risk to his life…at the start of the Protestant Reformation around 1520 A.D.
Many Christians today correctly preach and teach that God has a plan for our lives…which is straight down the middle of true, orthodox Christian doctrine.
But this does not mean that Christians can also at the same time…in ignorance follow the worldly conventional model of going our own way…as if God will somehow automatically insert and blend-in His higher ways and thoughts along an intersecting and overlapping dual track…of His higher ways diluted and compromised within our lower worldly desires and plans…silently inserted without our knowledge or without first obtaining our tacit acceptance.
God tells Abraham…upfront…in advance…the promise that in Canaan…God will make Abraham the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…as beyond count as the dust of the earth (Gen. 12: 1-2, 13:16-17, 15:5)…something that Abraham could not orchestrate through self-effort.
This is the displacement element expressed in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that from a scientific viewpoint as determined and prolific students of the natural world…now recognizing empirically the precision of its intelligent designer as being eminently better qualified to craft this universe than we are…as also being better qualified to compose our life-scripts than we are.
In the true biblical narrative worldview…for genuine forward progress to be made…for real function to actualize…God needs to replace our ways with His higher ways.
This is the “straight-up”…undiluted pure truth…that sets apart the biblical narrative in a modern world.
Abraham therefore…in his specific case…has a clear, definitive calling…which he responds to through faith and trust in God…unlike the storylines for Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Elizabeth Bennett and Mister Darcy…to name a few modern characters of fiction…who rely upon worldly conventional methods to resolve their predicaments.
Luke Skywalker in Star Wars uses “the force” to combat evil…but this is a rendition of pantheism…which has been eliminated as a viably serious worldview by the discovery of the Big Bang creation of the universe at a definite point in time 13.7 billion years ago.
The light that human scientific investigation now shines on the coordination of complex systems of information in the natural world…very similar to our own pursuit of perfect, error-free creations such as computer software language code for word-processing and spreadsheet applications…and space shuttle missions that return safely to earth…this recognition of the required intelligence component within complex systems of information…lifts our appreciation of the natural world up and out of the lower level of the now archaic, mindless and unguided naturalistic explanations for the workings of the natural world…up into the more plausible and rational explanation of the agency of an Intelligent Designer…even when His precise creative methods (Gen. 1:3) appear at this time to not be amenable to human scientific investigation.
The sheer brilliance of the introduction, arrangement, and sequence of the information needed to select the right number and types of chemicals in the right quantities…to carefully mix these in the right sequential order for the correct time-periods and at the right temperatures…to produce the actual origin of life in the complete and functional form of living, replicating cells of the highest complexity and integration of parts…can no longer be plausibly attributed to occur through the purely naturalistic means of accidentally lucky, undirected chance.
If we then extend the recognition of this same intellectual and artistic brilliance over to the composition of the biblical narrative stories of faith…we discover a perfect fit with the truth, reliability, and application of the Bible to modern life…that was always there in timeless relevance in the scriptures…that in my opinion now even exceeds the magnitude of Martin Luther’s discovery in scripture that “the just shall live by faith”…that propelled the start of the culturally monumental and theologically liberating Protestant Reformation.
Hard-core biblical skeptics incorrectly want Jesus Christ…on Tuesday or Wednesday of the first week following His resurrection on Easter morning…to walk openly down the middle of Main Street in broad daylight and straight into the Temple in Jerusalem…thus initiating a widespread, empirically undeniable proof for His claim to be the Son of God…on the same level that we popularly recognize that two-plus-two equals four…or that the nonday sun exists.
The fundamental shortcoming of this insistence by skeptics of the Bible…is that it creates no context…no milieu…no environment of life events and circumstances to create a personal relationship between God and people…within the mere factual consensus that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead.
It would substitute the wrong type of empirical facts in place of the correct type of empirical facts…the correct type being discovered through the lived experience of a journey of faith…rather than a fleeting assent to a visual observation…then going about our lives as before.
It removes the critical element of tension…of suspense over time regarding future outcomes…from our life-stories…that creates the context for faith to actualize into the mature, intimate, personal relationship of trust between God and people…the same as occurs in human relationships.
There is also no moral component…no merit…to acknowledging the existence of the noonday sun…or the truth that two-plus-two equals four…and not three or five…other than the correlation to the truth of the accuracy of our information.
Acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the Son of God through empirical, observational fact…has no change-of-character impact upon the worldly conventional narrative…has no course-correction in our decision to go our own way…as autonomous, self-reliant junior gods…sitting atop the thrones of our lives.
Seeing the resurrected Jesus walking openly down Main Street in Jerusalem…visually with our eyes…does not change our resolve to live our lives our way without “interference” from God…any more than seeing Jesus raise Lazarus to life after being four days dead in a rock covered tomb…changed the thinking of the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers…and a few days later in that same week…thoroughly and with finality rejecting Jesus…cruelling mocking Him as He hung dying on the cross (Mt. 27:39-44).
The decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives…to choose to follow Him…is a moral choice involving faith…at the center of personal relationships.
A personal relationship has the elements of mutual faith and trust…and this is where the modern recognition and elevated appreciation of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…revolutionizes our understanding of purpose and meaning for today’s Christians…and for sharing the gospel message to non-Christians.
It isn’t merely that the just shall live by faith…thereby clarifying and removing the injurious toxicity of the false doctrine of self-salvation…through the human invented performance of the good-works of indulgences, venerating relics, and making pilgrimages to holy sites…for the sole purpose of raising money for the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1500’s…exposed by Martin Luther at the risk to his life…at the start of the Protestant Reformation around 1520 A.D.
Many Christians today correctly preach and teach that God has a plan for our lives…which is straight down the middle of true, orthodox Christian doctrine.
But this does not mean that Christians can also at the same time…in ignorance follow the worldly conventional model of going our own way…as if God will somehow automatically insert and blend-in His higher ways and thoughts along an intersecting and overlapping dual track…of His higher ways diluted and compromised within our lower worldly desires and plans…silently inserted without our knowledge or without first obtaining our tacit acceptance.
God tells Abraham…upfront…in advance…the promise that in Canaan…God will make Abraham the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…as beyond count as the dust of the earth (Gen. 12: 1-2, 13:16-17, 15:5)…something that Abraham could not orchestrate through self-effort.
This is the displacement element expressed in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that from a scientific viewpoint as determined and prolific students of the natural world…now recognizing empirically the precision of its intelligent designer as being eminently better qualified to craft this universe than we are…as also being better qualified to compose our life-scripts than we are.
In the true biblical narrative worldview…for genuine forward progress to be made…for real function to actualize…God needs to replace our ways with His higher ways.
This is the “straight-up”…undiluted pure truth…that sets apart the biblical narrative in a modern world.
Abraham therefore…in his specific case…has a clear, definitive calling…which he responds to through faith and trust in God…unlike the storylines for Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Elizabeth Bennett and Mister Darcy…to name a few modern characters of fiction…who rely upon worldly conventional methods to resolve their predicaments.
Luke Skywalker in Star Wars uses “the force” to combat evil…but this is a rendition of pantheism…which has been eliminated as a viably serious worldview by the discovery of the Big Bang creation of the universe at a definite point in time 13.7 billion years ago.
