Barton Jahn's Blog, page 10
January 10, 2018
David
If we mistakenly think we have everything perfectly arranged financially and socially, we will also mistakenly think we have no need for God. An autonomous journey-of-self automatically pushes aside a journey of faith in fellowship with God, because we cannot live two opposing lives at the same time.
Is entirely self-controlling our destiny the underlying purpose of life? How is it that we would even independently know the real purpose of this short-in-length life for us? Is it written in stone somewhere? Is the purpose of life capably passed down to us from our parents and grandparents? Are we born into a world where the life-examples of the experienced adults around us clearly demonstrate the best approach to life (1 Pet. 1:18)? Judging by the chaotic, universally repetitive trial-and-error world around us, mankind in general has no idea what is the true purpose of our being here.
One of the basic questions, which people pause to think about during some period in their busy lives, even people with economic and social stability, is: “why am I here?”
Absent specific knowledge of our purpose in life, people in our modern culture who do not personally know God through an intimate walk of faith, vote with their self-will and their pocketbooks to choose the default, conventional, pleasure-driven, self-centered, spiritually risk-averse, and worldly predictable road.
How many people do we personally know, or read about in fiction novels, or watch in movies, who listen to God in the Spirit, subordinate their self-wills, and follow the life-plan that God could and would reveal to them as the optimum course of action? This approach does not exist in our popular culture because it involves surrendering all to Jesus Christ, because it involves the second half of the cross.
The worldly conventional life-approach has no faith or trust in God, but instead has faith and trust in ourselves. The type of risk, danger, and adventure that comes from faith and trust in the living God, who can compose and orchestrate a brilliantly creative life like David’s divinely planned and executed ascent to the kingship of Israel, does not exist in a God-less cultural environment.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes of Jesus day were no longer the spiritual children of Abraham, because they held on to their self-will instead of submitting it to God. Like people of our own culture, they were afraid of the uncertainty of relinquishing their hold over the destiny of their lives into the trust of God’s care. Instead these Jerusalem leaders created their own form of religion based upon rules, regulations, and the performance of self-works rituals that replaced the living but more risky faith of submitting their lives to God.
We see this pattern throughout history in all man-invented, perfunctory religious experience. People will do almost anything to avoid having to give up their self-will to God, because deep down inside they are afraid. People are afraid to take the risk that God’s way might actually be better, because of the element of uncertainty of what God might do with their lives.
There is security in staying with what we know, rather than venturing out into a perilous journey of faith with Jesus Christ into the unknown. There is a sense of security in not letting go of the power we have over our own lives. This is the case, even when the recipient of this letting go of the power of self-sovereignty…Jesus Christ our Creator God…will lovingly re-direct this self-same power back down towards us in a more intelligently designed and beneficially purposed adventure-of-faith life-plan.
This is why many people have to reach the bottom depths of failure and suffering, to have nothing left to lose and nowhere else to go, before they will turn to God for His help. Sadly, Jesus Christ is often the last resort when He should be the first and most sensible beginning option in discovering our true purpose in life. That many people stubbornly hang on to their own self-in-control natures, to the ruin of themselves and often those around them, is one of the central, core problems with the human race.
David has to face Goliath in a life-and-death struggle at the beginning of David’s career, not because God sets up these types of contests for His own enjoyment, but because we must learn real faith and trust in God to see us through challenges when failure and falsification of God’s character are live possibilities.
In a biblical quality journey of faith we sometimes barely make it through the tightest of choreographed and integrated circumstances because this is one way amongst several ways that God uses to authenticate His direct participation in our lives.
Miraculous or near-miraculous deliverance through supernaturally choreographed events is one tool in God’s tool-kit to separate His ways above worldly conventional normalcy.
We see this repeated throughout the narrative stories of the Bible for an eternally valid reason. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6) because without a context of circumstances requiring committed faith in the face of discouraging appearances, God cannot reveal to us His very real presence in our lives in stark contrast to the subjective, humanistically generated false experience of self-works “religion.”
The story of David’s anointing by Samuel, and his calling, exploits, and tribulations in route to the kingship of Israel is not a man-invented myth because the component of the active participation of God in David’s story in beyond the reach of the creative imagination and invention of human writers. An adventure of faith like David’s is unique to the Bible.
David can write the 23rd Psalm because he actually followed God through the valley of the shadow of death. David learned first-hand that he did not have to fear evil, when God was with him.
Five of the most important words ever recorded in all of literature are: “for thou art with me” (Ps. 23:4). The contrast between the God-composed life of David, living on the knife’s edge of danger in faith and trust in God, and the self-led life in pursuit of security and self-preservation that will not venture out into the risky territory of faith in God, could not be greater.
The reward for David’s faith and trust is that he became Israel’s greatest king and fulfilled the purpose of his life (Ps. 139:14-18), and in doing so he came to personally know his Creator God.
From The Second Half of the Cross
Is entirely self-controlling our destiny the underlying purpose of life? How is it that we would even independently know the real purpose of this short-in-length life for us? Is it written in stone somewhere? Is the purpose of life capably passed down to us from our parents and grandparents? Are we born into a world where the life-examples of the experienced adults around us clearly demonstrate the best approach to life (1 Pet. 1:18)? Judging by the chaotic, universally repetitive trial-and-error world around us, mankind in general has no idea what is the true purpose of our being here.
One of the basic questions, which people pause to think about during some period in their busy lives, even people with economic and social stability, is: “why am I here?”
Absent specific knowledge of our purpose in life, people in our modern culture who do not personally know God through an intimate walk of faith, vote with their self-will and their pocketbooks to choose the default, conventional, pleasure-driven, self-centered, spiritually risk-averse, and worldly predictable road.
How many people do we personally know, or read about in fiction novels, or watch in movies, who listen to God in the Spirit, subordinate their self-wills, and follow the life-plan that God could and would reveal to them as the optimum course of action? This approach does not exist in our popular culture because it involves surrendering all to Jesus Christ, because it involves the second half of the cross.
The worldly conventional life-approach has no faith or trust in God, but instead has faith and trust in ourselves. The type of risk, danger, and adventure that comes from faith and trust in the living God, who can compose and orchestrate a brilliantly creative life like David’s divinely planned and executed ascent to the kingship of Israel, does not exist in a God-less cultural environment.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes of Jesus day were no longer the spiritual children of Abraham, because they held on to their self-will instead of submitting it to God. Like people of our own culture, they were afraid of the uncertainty of relinquishing their hold over the destiny of their lives into the trust of God’s care. Instead these Jerusalem leaders created their own form of religion based upon rules, regulations, and the performance of self-works rituals that replaced the living but more risky faith of submitting their lives to God.
We see this pattern throughout history in all man-invented, perfunctory religious experience. People will do almost anything to avoid having to give up their self-will to God, because deep down inside they are afraid. People are afraid to take the risk that God’s way might actually be better, because of the element of uncertainty of what God might do with their lives.
There is security in staying with what we know, rather than venturing out into a perilous journey of faith with Jesus Christ into the unknown. There is a sense of security in not letting go of the power we have over our own lives. This is the case, even when the recipient of this letting go of the power of self-sovereignty…Jesus Christ our Creator God…will lovingly re-direct this self-same power back down towards us in a more intelligently designed and beneficially purposed adventure-of-faith life-plan.
This is why many people have to reach the bottom depths of failure and suffering, to have nothing left to lose and nowhere else to go, before they will turn to God for His help. Sadly, Jesus Christ is often the last resort when He should be the first and most sensible beginning option in discovering our true purpose in life. That many people stubbornly hang on to their own self-in-control natures, to the ruin of themselves and often those around them, is one of the central, core problems with the human race.
David has to face Goliath in a life-and-death struggle at the beginning of David’s career, not because God sets up these types of contests for His own enjoyment, but because we must learn real faith and trust in God to see us through challenges when failure and falsification of God’s character are live possibilities.
In a biblical quality journey of faith we sometimes barely make it through the tightest of choreographed and integrated circumstances because this is one way amongst several ways that God uses to authenticate His direct participation in our lives.
Miraculous or near-miraculous deliverance through supernaturally choreographed events is one tool in God’s tool-kit to separate His ways above worldly conventional normalcy.
We see this repeated throughout the narrative stories of the Bible for an eternally valid reason. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6) because without a context of circumstances requiring committed faith in the face of discouraging appearances, God cannot reveal to us His very real presence in our lives in stark contrast to the subjective, humanistically generated false experience of self-works “religion.”
The story of David’s anointing by Samuel, and his calling, exploits, and tribulations in route to the kingship of Israel is not a man-invented myth because the component of the active participation of God in David’s story in beyond the reach of the creative imagination and invention of human writers. An adventure of faith like David’s is unique to the Bible.
David can write the 23rd Psalm because he actually followed God through the valley of the shadow of death. David learned first-hand that he did not have to fear evil, when God was with him.
Five of the most important words ever recorded in all of literature are: “for thou art with me” (Ps. 23:4). The contrast between the God-composed life of David, living on the knife’s edge of danger in faith and trust in God, and the self-led life in pursuit of security and self-preservation that will not venture out into the risky territory of faith in God, could not be greater.
The reward for David’s faith and trust is that he became Israel’s greatest king and fulfilled the purpose of his life (Ps. 139:14-18), and in doing so he came to personally know his Creator God.
From The Second Half of the Cross
January 8, 2018
Commonsense Christian Apologetics
For those of you who are interested...I have a new book out called Commonsense Christian Apologetics on Amazon...272 pages.
If you have a Kindle it is $0.99...in paperback $10.
I think this is my best book. It discusses topics that are not typically covered in the standard apologetics debate...which are written from a commonsense viewpoint...and therefore easy to read...yet still have some persuasive power and punch.
Hope you enjoy it.
If you have a Kindle it is $0.99...in paperback $10.
I think this is my best book. It discusses topics that are not typically covered in the standard apologetics debate...which are written from a commonsense viewpoint...and therefore easy to read...yet still have some persuasive power and punch.
Hope you enjoy it.
December 29, 2017
As Big as Anything in History
As I read the biblical narrative stories of faith in both the Old and New Testaments…I see basically two things happening in terms of journey of faith life-scripts, direction in the lives of Christians, eternal purpose and meaning, and God speaking to us.
The first is the calling of people like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and Paul…who had major promises of God…or very clear missions, goals, or final outcomes to aim for…given to them by God as guidance and hope-filled inspiration at the very beginning of their difficult and challenging journeys of faith.
We naturally tend to write-off these spectacular callings as if they only apply to the superstars of the Bible…too far above our experience to be a viable pattern to apply to our own lives…on a much lesser scale.
Becoming the “father of faith,” becoming the governor of Egypt, liberating the Israelite slaves from Egypt, conquering militarily the Promised Land, becoming king in Israel, rebuilding the walls and the temple in Jerusalem, and becoming the premier Christian evangelists to the Greco-Roman world in the first-century…these are things that seem too big for most of us…and therefore the concept of the displacement of our ways by God’s higher ways in conformity to the cross of Christ…and the gap that is created in a God-composed adventure of faith life-script having a humanistically unattainable goal according to the definition of faith described so brilliantly in Hebrews 11:1…can both be lost in the magnitude and grandeur of the callings of the storylines of these biblical characters.
These displacement and gap elements in the biblical narrative stories of faith could hypothetically seem to raise the bar…the standard…too high for the average Jew in Old Testament times…and the Christian (Jewish Christian or Gentile) in New Testament times.
The recognition of the displacement of our ways with God’s higher ways and thoughts…and the gap in a journey of faith that separates what we can do from what we cannot do…setting up the context for genuine biblical faith to actualize…this could potentially cause an anticipation and expectation problem for many Christians who are faithfully following God and going about their normal Christian practices of prayer, reading and studying the Bible, being active in fellowship with other Christians, and sharing their faith with others…simply because God has not spoken directly to them regarding a specific calling upfront like the examples of the major biblical characters listed above.
But the second thing that I see that is happening in the Bible…probably more often…is that God also works unseen in people’s lives who are trying to be faithful and do the right things…even though God does not at first reveal directly to them…by speaking to them in the Spirit…a major promise, missions, or goal upfront at the very beginning of their journey of faith.
This second type of biblical character can see God’s hand at work over time in hindsight…part-way through their journey of faith…or looking backwards after it has finished and all the dust has settled.
Examples of this type of experience with God…in the biblical narrative stories of faith…might include Ruth, Hannah, Esther and Mordecai, the three Hebrew young men in the fiery furnace of King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and the ten apostles other than Peter and Judas Iscariot.
Ruth is interesting in this regard…in that she does not even know that by marrying Boaz, she has become part of the royal line that produces the future King David in direct line to Jesus Christ the Son of God…born far ahead in the future in the first-century A.D. How could God…in this case…reveal more information to Ruth in-the-moment…without possibly jeopardizing giving away the future plans of God for mankind in the kingship of David and the royal line leading to Jesus the Son of God and eternal King in heaven?
In fact, I think that every positive biblical character did not have a full and complete understanding of the unique and critical role they played in the unfolding saga of God’s eternal plans and destiny for mankind.
It is safe to say that there is not a single person on the planet today that has a complete macro and micro grasp of the higher ways and thoughts of God.
The point I want to make here…as has been repeated many times throughout this book…is that as Abraham gets his calling from God to go from the city of Haran to the Promised Land of Canaan…with each step that Abraham takes God is displacing whatever normative plans Abraham might have otherwise had back in Haran…with a new life-script beyond anything Abraham could or would have dreamed up…beyond anything Abraham could self-compose, contrive, or self-orchestrate.
This worldly unconventional element of displacement of our ways with God’s higher ways…illustrated in the biblical narrative stories of faith according to the two general patterns described above…contained within God-composed journey of faith life-scripts starting with the detailed and highly specific life-story calling of Abraham and continuing throughout the Bible all the way through to the New Testament first-century…down to our current “church age”…is in my view as big as anything else in the history of mankind.
This is as big as the discovery by Copernicus that the earth revolves around the Sun, or Einstein’s theory of general relativity, or the discovery of Edwin Hubble of the Big Bang expansion of the universe, or the discovery of antibiotic medicines to combat disease, or our discovery and understanding of DNA…the “language of life.”
This biblical concept is as big as the American Declaration of Independence…the American Constitution…the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery…the women’s suffrage movement…and the victory over despotic tyranny during World War II.
This biblical concept of the displacement of our ways with God’s ways…and the gap we see in genuine biblical faith between what we can do and what we cannot do on our own…integral and fundamental to a journey of faith following Jehovah in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament…is as big as the discovery by Martin Luther that “the just shall live by faith” rather than works-salvation through pilgrimages, relics, and indulgences…and the monumental realization that common people should have access to the Bible translated into their own languages…that started the Protestant Reformation.
The concept that the living God…the brilliant Creator of the universe…can play a pivotal role…indeed take the lead in crafting and shaping a journey of faith for each one of us…that bears the stamp of divine imagination and innovative creativity in being 100 percent contrary to the opposite worldview of pursuing…on our own…our self-validation and acceptance according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…entirely outside of the zone of human literary invention…how can this eternally valuable and applicable biblical concept not be as large or larger than any other concept or event in the history of mankind?
1 John 2:17 reads: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
The first is the calling of people like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and Paul…who had major promises of God…or very clear missions, goals, or final outcomes to aim for…given to them by God as guidance and hope-filled inspiration at the very beginning of their difficult and challenging journeys of faith.
We naturally tend to write-off these spectacular callings as if they only apply to the superstars of the Bible…too far above our experience to be a viable pattern to apply to our own lives…on a much lesser scale.
Becoming the “father of faith,” becoming the governor of Egypt, liberating the Israelite slaves from Egypt, conquering militarily the Promised Land, becoming king in Israel, rebuilding the walls and the temple in Jerusalem, and becoming the premier Christian evangelists to the Greco-Roman world in the first-century…these are things that seem too big for most of us…and therefore the concept of the displacement of our ways by God’s higher ways in conformity to the cross of Christ…and the gap that is created in a God-composed adventure of faith life-script having a humanistically unattainable goal according to the definition of faith described so brilliantly in Hebrews 11:1…can both be lost in the magnitude and grandeur of the callings of the storylines of these biblical characters.
These displacement and gap elements in the biblical narrative stories of faith could hypothetically seem to raise the bar…the standard…too high for the average Jew in Old Testament times…and the Christian (Jewish Christian or Gentile) in New Testament times.
The recognition of the displacement of our ways with God’s higher ways and thoughts…and the gap in a journey of faith that separates what we can do from what we cannot do…setting up the context for genuine biblical faith to actualize…this could potentially cause an anticipation and expectation problem for many Christians who are faithfully following God and going about their normal Christian practices of prayer, reading and studying the Bible, being active in fellowship with other Christians, and sharing their faith with others…simply because God has not spoken directly to them regarding a specific calling upfront like the examples of the major biblical characters listed above.
But the second thing that I see that is happening in the Bible…probably more often…is that God also works unseen in people’s lives who are trying to be faithful and do the right things…even though God does not at first reveal directly to them…by speaking to them in the Spirit…a major promise, missions, or goal upfront at the very beginning of their journey of faith.
This second type of biblical character can see God’s hand at work over time in hindsight…part-way through their journey of faith…or looking backwards after it has finished and all the dust has settled.
Examples of this type of experience with God…in the biblical narrative stories of faith…might include Ruth, Hannah, Esther and Mordecai, the three Hebrew young men in the fiery furnace of King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and the ten apostles other than Peter and Judas Iscariot.
Ruth is interesting in this regard…in that she does not even know that by marrying Boaz, she has become part of the royal line that produces the future King David in direct line to Jesus Christ the Son of God…born far ahead in the future in the first-century A.D. How could God…in this case…reveal more information to Ruth in-the-moment…without possibly jeopardizing giving away the future plans of God for mankind in the kingship of David and the royal line leading to Jesus the Son of God and eternal King in heaven?
In fact, I think that every positive biblical character did not have a full and complete understanding of the unique and critical role they played in the unfolding saga of God’s eternal plans and destiny for mankind.
It is safe to say that there is not a single person on the planet today that has a complete macro and micro grasp of the higher ways and thoughts of God.
The point I want to make here…as has been repeated many times throughout this book…is that as Abraham gets his calling from God to go from the city of Haran to the Promised Land of Canaan…with each step that Abraham takes God is displacing whatever normative plans Abraham might have otherwise had back in Haran…with a new life-script beyond anything Abraham could or would have dreamed up…beyond anything Abraham could self-compose, contrive, or self-orchestrate.
This worldly unconventional element of displacement of our ways with God’s higher ways…illustrated in the biblical narrative stories of faith according to the two general patterns described above…contained within God-composed journey of faith life-scripts starting with the detailed and highly specific life-story calling of Abraham and continuing throughout the Bible all the way through to the New Testament first-century…down to our current “church age”…is in my view as big as anything else in the history of mankind.
This is as big as the discovery by Copernicus that the earth revolves around the Sun, or Einstein’s theory of general relativity, or the discovery of Edwin Hubble of the Big Bang expansion of the universe, or the discovery of antibiotic medicines to combat disease, or our discovery and understanding of DNA…the “language of life.”
This biblical concept is as big as the American Declaration of Independence…the American Constitution…the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery…the women’s suffrage movement…and the victory over despotic tyranny during World War II.
This biblical concept of the displacement of our ways with God’s ways…and the gap we see in genuine biblical faith between what we can do and what we cannot do on our own…integral and fundamental to a journey of faith following Jehovah in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament…is as big as the discovery by Martin Luther that “the just shall live by faith” rather than works-salvation through pilgrimages, relics, and indulgences…and the monumental realization that common people should have access to the Bible translated into their own languages…that started the Protestant Reformation.
The concept that the living God…the brilliant Creator of the universe…can play a pivotal role…indeed take the lead in crafting and shaping a journey of faith for each one of us…that bears the stamp of divine imagination and innovative creativity in being 100 percent contrary to the opposite worldview of pursuing…on our own…our self-validation and acceptance according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…entirely outside of the zone of human literary invention…how can this eternally valuable and applicable biblical concept not be as large or larger than any other concept or event in the history of mankind?
1 John 2:17 reads: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
December 2, 2017
The Benefit of the Doubt
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
As a near-to-last point in this opening introduction…if we have a conflict or an issue with some colleague at work…and we discuss this with a friend who thinks well of us…that friend will give us the supportive benefit of the doubt upon hearing the details.
But a person who is a friend, yet who may not think as highly of us, may automatically take the side of the other person in the dispute…upon hearing the details…and begin to question our handling of the situation…in a knee-jerk, critical fashion…not giving us the benefit of the doubt…thereby exposing their true lower opinion of us.
The biblical narrative stories of faith are filled with people giving God the benefit of the doubt in their adventures of faith.
Every positive person of faith in the Bible has a personal relationship with God that has the universal element of giving God the benefit of the doubt…even amidst difficult and challenging events, and the negatively trending direction of outward appearances.
Biblical characters that immediately come to mind in this regard are Abraham going to Canaan (Heb. 11:8), Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison desperately holding on to the promise of his two earlier dreams received years before in Canaan (Gen. 37:7, 9), and Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:11, 4:20).
Jeremiah has a continual, ongoing dialogue with God about the stubborn unbelief of the Jerusalem leaders. Elijah complains bitterly to God about the overwhelming pushback and resistance he is encountering in his calling as a prophet in apostate Israel under the rule of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.
Other notable people who gave God the benefit of the doubt through difficult challenges are Joshua, Samuel, Job, Ruth, Hannah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and all of the minor prophets…to name only a few in the Old Testament.
The Psalms in the Old Testament are filled with people having a personal relationship and dialogue with God…giving God the benefit of the doubt to come through for them in the middle of challenging difficulties.
David’s famous 23rd Psalm is all about giving God the benefit of the doubt.
People of faith in the New Testament actually spent face-time in person with Jesus the Son of God (Jn. 1:14)…and gave Him the benefit of the doubt amidst pushback and resistance to His message and ministry…pushback of deadly intensity (Jn. 11:8, 16).
This idea of the people of faith giving God the benefit of the doubt during the course of their journeys of faith…giving to God the value and worth that putting trust and faith in another person entails…has enormous commonsense, apologetic value as an argument for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.
This has apologetic value by virtue of its existence as evidence of genuine relationships…very subtle yet solid evidence that holds water because the benefit of the doubt is there…integrally and inseparably embedded within the events and circumstances of the storyline scripts. This evidence would not exist at all in the storylines…if it was not in fact a true indication of the real connection of personal relationships between people and the living God.
This subtle element is baked into every biblical adventure of faith…and cannot be homogenized out without damaging the storylines.
This component of giving God the benefit of the doubt is a powerful clue that these relationships…these stories of faith…are real.
A moral concept as subtle yet as powerful as this could not be the product of collusion on the part of the 40 different authors spanning 1,500 years in the writing of the Bible…universally giving God the benefit of the doubt from Genesis through Revelation…from beginning to end…without the slightest hint of progressive evolution or creative development in the portrayal of biblical faith…as would be expected with a humanistic origin.
The life-stories of Abraham through Paul in the Bible…all depicting biblical faith having this common ingredient of giving God the benefit of the doubt…as religious fiction invented by human writers inspired out of the narrow realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone…as an explanation for their origin…is again nonsensical.
Like the massive infusion of creative information that entered into the natural world to form the complex living creatures during the Cambrian Explosion of 530 million years ago…inexplicable as a materialistic or naturalistic event…the correct answer to the question of the origin of the biblical narrative stories of faith is that they are a divine creation of God.
The complex and functionally coherent information that enters into the human experience…suddenly and instantly in the form of a God-composed adventure of faith…starting with Abraham…is the action of an independent agent God…providing commonsense apologetic evidence for both His existence…and for the truth of the Bible.
No one can write a fictional novel or short story without revealing something of themselves in the storyline.
In the biblical narrative stories of faith…God not only reveals His divine authorship through His supernatural participation in the storylines in a way that is outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…by introducing the way of the cross…but also exposes something of Himself in revealing His intention to introduce Himself to the people of faith in each biblical storyline…and in the process reveal something of Himself to us today…through the context of life-scripts designed to create the incredible opportunity to exercise the benefit of the doubt in the living God.
Mechanical robots cannot fathom the concept of respect. Neither can robots plumb the depths of giving someone the supportive benefit of the doubt of placing faith, trust, and dignity in another person…extending the gift of value, worth, and validation to that person.
Our non-robotic, analytical capacity for moral reasoning and free-will choice…wrapped within our physical living bodies having all of the marvelous abilities and talents we possess…may be the single-most, top-tier apologetic evidence for the existence of God…easily accessible to commonsense contemplation.
As a near-to-last point in this opening introduction…if we have a conflict or an issue with some colleague at work…and we discuss this with a friend who thinks well of us…that friend will give us the supportive benefit of the doubt upon hearing the details.
But a person who is a friend, yet who may not think as highly of us, may automatically take the side of the other person in the dispute…upon hearing the details…and begin to question our handling of the situation…in a knee-jerk, critical fashion…not giving us the benefit of the doubt…thereby exposing their true lower opinion of us.
The biblical narrative stories of faith are filled with people giving God the benefit of the doubt in their adventures of faith.
Every positive person of faith in the Bible has a personal relationship with God that has the universal element of giving God the benefit of the doubt…even amidst difficult and challenging events, and the negatively trending direction of outward appearances.
Biblical characters that immediately come to mind in this regard are Abraham going to Canaan (Heb. 11:8), Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison desperately holding on to the promise of his two earlier dreams received years before in Canaan (Gen. 37:7, 9), and Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:11, 4:20).
Jeremiah has a continual, ongoing dialogue with God about the stubborn unbelief of the Jerusalem leaders. Elijah complains bitterly to God about the overwhelming pushback and resistance he is encountering in his calling as a prophet in apostate Israel under the rule of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.
Other notable people who gave God the benefit of the doubt through difficult challenges are Joshua, Samuel, Job, Ruth, Hannah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and all of the minor prophets…to name only a few in the Old Testament.
The Psalms in the Old Testament are filled with people having a personal relationship and dialogue with God…giving God the benefit of the doubt to come through for them in the middle of challenging difficulties.
David’s famous 23rd Psalm is all about giving God the benefit of the doubt.
People of faith in the New Testament actually spent face-time in person with Jesus the Son of God (Jn. 1:14)…and gave Him the benefit of the doubt amidst pushback and resistance to His message and ministry…pushback of deadly intensity (Jn. 11:8, 16).
This idea of the people of faith giving God the benefit of the doubt during the course of their journeys of faith…giving to God the value and worth that putting trust and faith in another person entails…has enormous commonsense, apologetic value as an argument for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.
This has apologetic value by virtue of its existence as evidence of genuine relationships…very subtle yet solid evidence that holds water because the benefit of the doubt is there…integrally and inseparably embedded within the events and circumstances of the storyline scripts. This evidence would not exist at all in the storylines…if it was not in fact a true indication of the real connection of personal relationships between people and the living God.
This subtle element is baked into every biblical adventure of faith…and cannot be homogenized out without damaging the storylines.
This component of giving God the benefit of the doubt is a powerful clue that these relationships…these stories of faith…are real.
A moral concept as subtle yet as powerful as this could not be the product of collusion on the part of the 40 different authors spanning 1,500 years in the writing of the Bible…universally giving God the benefit of the doubt from Genesis through Revelation…from beginning to end…without the slightest hint of progressive evolution or creative development in the portrayal of biblical faith…as would be expected with a humanistic origin.
The life-stories of Abraham through Paul in the Bible…all depicting biblical faith having this common ingredient of giving God the benefit of the doubt…as religious fiction invented by human writers inspired out of the narrow realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone…as an explanation for their origin…is again nonsensical.
Like the massive infusion of creative information that entered into the natural world to form the complex living creatures during the Cambrian Explosion of 530 million years ago…inexplicable as a materialistic or naturalistic event…the correct answer to the question of the origin of the biblical narrative stories of faith is that they are a divine creation of God.
The complex and functionally coherent information that enters into the human experience…suddenly and instantly in the form of a God-composed adventure of faith…starting with Abraham…is the action of an independent agent God…providing commonsense apologetic evidence for both His existence…and for the truth of the Bible.
No one can write a fictional novel or short story without revealing something of themselves in the storyline.
In the biblical narrative stories of faith…God not only reveals His divine authorship through His supernatural participation in the storylines in a way that is outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…by introducing the way of the cross…but also exposes something of Himself in revealing His intention to introduce Himself to the people of faith in each biblical storyline…and in the process reveal something of Himself to us today…through the context of life-scripts designed to create the incredible opportunity to exercise the benefit of the doubt in the living God.
Mechanical robots cannot fathom the concept of respect. Neither can robots plumb the depths of giving someone the supportive benefit of the doubt of placing faith, trust, and dignity in another person…extending the gift of value, worth, and validation to that person.
Our non-robotic, analytical capacity for moral reasoning and free-will choice…wrapped within our physical living bodies having all of the marvelous abilities and talents we possess…may be the single-most, top-tier apologetic evidence for the existence of God…easily accessible to commonsense contemplation.
November 30, 2017
God Does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 3
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
The hard truth I have discovered…along with tens or hundreds of millions of people experiencing biblical faith over the past centuries going back to Abraham…is that in the fulfillment of God’s promises to me in my own journey of faith…a part of me does not want God to do things His way within the elevated zone of the supernatural…I want things to progress more conventionally according to Bart’s way.
The cross of Jesus Christ applied to my life inserts a supernatural participation into the course of my life that brings with it goals and promises of God that are beyond my reach to self-fulfill…requiring all of the improvements of character…patience, trust, faith, surrender, flexibility, and giving God the benefit of the doubt (Heb. 11:1)…that in the process requires part of my way to die…to move aside…to make way for God’s higher ways.
But if we look hard enough…in these biblical stories of faith…God has a long-range plan that is above and outside of horizontally conventional thinking…above the aspirations and expectations…what we think we are entitled to…in terms of worldly conventional normalcy.
Yet the sacrifices made in every biblical narrative story of faith…the departures from normal aspirations and expectations…from Abraham onward…produces good for a large number of other people.
Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac his beloved son on Mount Moriah…stopped just in time by God with a shout out of heaven at the last moment…gives mankind a priceless and confirming foreglimpse of what God will do two thousand years later on Calvary Hill…God indeed providing a very special Lamb…His own Son…as a sacrifice for sin.
God’s higher ways for the life-script of Joseph…to prepare him to become governor of Egypt during the great famine…basically displaced 13 years of “normal” life according to horizontally conventional thinking…that Joseph might otherwise think he was entitled to.
Yet this divine insertion of God’s ways…removing altogether whatever alternative “normal” life Joseph might otherwise have lived…was and is a huge benefit to mankind in demonstrating not only the reality of the existence of God…but also the incredible ingenuity that accrues within a God-scripted adventure of faith when we choose God-sovereignty over self-sovereignty.
If we take this same model and apply it to every positive person of faith recorded in the Bible…we find the same overlay of the cross of Christ…God displacing our ways with His ways…for the benefit of ourselves and for a large number of other people.
This is the difficult part about true biblical faith…it involves the participation of the living God who wants to do things His way…for our benefit.
This may be the primary, fundamental explanation underlying the existence of our universe and our world.
If God can come through for me…and for you…in a clearly supernatural way involving fulfilled promises outside of our control…this confirms not only God’s existence beyond a shadow of a doubt…but also His competence in human life script-writing to match the brilliant design we see in the natural world all around us. This priceless discovery then becomes a reality that belongs to me…and to you…for all eternity.
This reality can only occur within the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…inaccessible except through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and King (Mt. 4:17; Lk. 13:1-5; Jn. 8:24).
It does not exist anywhere else outside of the Bible.
This idea of God doing things His way in our lives…for our benefit…above and beyond our understanding at the time (Heb. 11:1)…according to a God-composed life-script individually crafted for us…is so far outside the bounds of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…so offensive and off-putting to the norms of sitting atop the thrones of our lives as autonomous, junior-gods “calling the shots”…that to ascribe this aspect of the biblical narrative stories of faith to be the product of human literary invention…is nonsensical.
The hard truth I have discovered…along with tens or hundreds of millions of people experiencing biblical faith over the past centuries going back to Abraham…is that in the fulfillment of God’s promises to me in my own journey of faith…a part of me does not want God to do things His way within the elevated zone of the supernatural…I want things to progress more conventionally according to Bart’s way.
The cross of Jesus Christ applied to my life inserts a supernatural participation into the course of my life that brings with it goals and promises of God that are beyond my reach to self-fulfill…requiring all of the improvements of character…patience, trust, faith, surrender, flexibility, and giving God the benefit of the doubt (Heb. 11:1)…that in the process requires part of my way to die…to move aside…to make way for God’s higher ways.
But if we look hard enough…in these biblical stories of faith…God has a long-range plan that is above and outside of horizontally conventional thinking…above the aspirations and expectations…what we think we are entitled to…in terms of worldly conventional normalcy.
Yet the sacrifices made in every biblical narrative story of faith…the departures from normal aspirations and expectations…from Abraham onward…produces good for a large number of other people.
Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac his beloved son on Mount Moriah…stopped just in time by God with a shout out of heaven at the last moment…gives mankind a priceless and confirming foreglimpse of what God will do two thousand years later on Calvary Hill…God indeed providing a very special Lamb…His own Son…as a sacrifice for sin.
God’s higher ways for the life-script of Joseph…to prepare him to become governor of Egypt during the great famine…basically displaced 13 years of “normal” life according to horizontally conventional thinking…that Joseph might otherwise think he was entitled to.
Yet this divine insertion of God’s ways…removing altogether whatever alternative “normal” life Joseph might otherwise have lived…was and is a huge benefit to mankind in demonstrating not only the reality of the existence of God…but also the incredible ingenuity that accrues within a God-scripted adventure of faith when we choose God-sovereignty over self-sovereignty.
If we take this same model and apply it to every positive person of faith recorded in the Bible…we find the same overlay of the cross of Christ…God displacing our ways with His ways…for the benefit of ourselves and for a large number of other people.
This is the difficult part about true biblical faith…it involves the participation of the living God who wants to do things His way…for our benefit.
This may be the primary, fundamental explanation underlying the existence of our universe and our world.
If God can come through for me…and for you…in a clearly supernatural way involving fulfilled promises outside of our control…this confirms not only God’s existence beyond a shadow of a doubt…but also His competence in human life script-writing to match the brilliant design we see in the natural world all around us. This priceless discovery then becomes a reality that belongs to me…and to you…for all eternity.
This reality can only occur within the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…inaccessible except through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and King (Mt. 4:17; Lk. 13:1-5; Jn. 8:24).
It does not exist anywhere else outside of the Bible.
This idea of God doing things His way in our lives…for our benefit…above and beyond our understanding at the time (Heb. 11:1)…according to a God-composed life-script individually crafted for us…is so far outside the bounds of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…so offensive and off-putting to the norms of sitting atop the thrones of our lives as autonomous, junior-gods “calling the shots”…that to ascribe this aspect of the biblical narrative stories of faith to be the product of human literary invention…is nonsensical.
November 29, 2017
God Does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 2
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
November 28, 2017
God does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 1
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
If we are looking for convincing evidence to differentiate the biblical narrative stories of faith…from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to make the case that these biblical life-scripts could not be the product of human literary invention…another telling argument in this direction is the diametric opposites of our ways versus God’s ways as depicted in the biblical narrative stories of faith.
Anyone who follows the biblical God deep enough into their adventure of faith eventually runs experientially into the jarring realization, at some point in time, that we want to do things…even the big things like the fulfillment of the supernatural promises of God in our lives…our way.
This is one of the fundamental aspects of the Bible that creates a clearly delineated fork-in-the-road…a radical departure…away from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is an aspect in our Christian discipleship that takes us on a unique journey far from conventional thinking and norms.
Abraham naturally has his own ideas about how he will become the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…and his ideas do not include waiting 25 years for the birth of Isaac…the son of promise.
This important piece of information God left out of the initial calling of Abraham…for the best and highest reason imaginable…to set up the unique context for biblical faith…to actualize.
According to contemporary Christian jargon…doing something our way outside of the council or participation of God…is popularly called an “Ishmael”…doomed to failure.
Abraham and Sarah trying to help-out God in fulfilling God’s plans and promise…by bringing Hagar into the picture and thus producing Ishmael…actually goes against-the-grain of the best and highest outcome in this Abraham storyline…in at least two ways.
First, the main goal…the outcome that the life-script of Abraham hones-in on…is not the start of a large family-life according to worldly expectations and aspirations…but rather for Abraham to become the “father of faith”…of biblical faith that by commonsense definition requires elements of patience, trust, and faith.
But faith and trust in who and in what? Not in himself…not in his plans…not in his ideas…not in self-realization and self-reliance. This is the dividing point…the departure…away from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…that is unique to the Bible.
Certainly the God-composed life-script for Abraham and Sarah could have had Sarah becoming pregnant soon after their arrival in Canaan…with several children following thereafter…producing a conventionally normal family life…in which it could be said of Abraham and Sarah: “and they lived happily forever after.”
But this is not the life-script for Abraham and Sarah. Normal marital relations are not working. The promised descendants…as numerous as the stars in the night sky…are nowhere in sight.
This is where the second main theme of the story comes into play. In a God-composed journey of faith life-script…God writes into the plotline of events and circumstances a dependence upon Himself…that has an outcome…a goal…that requires supernatural intervention…every time throughout the Bible.
This is the point where our ways and God’s ways divide. This is where self-sovereignty separates from God-sovereignty. This is where the biblical narrative stories of faith depart from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is one of the compelling reasons why the biblical narrative stories of faith could not possibly come from human literary invention.
Bluntly stated…we want the promises of God to be fulfilled in our lives…our way according to worldly conventionality…and they can’t be if they are to have any eternal value.
This rude and shocking reality is not only for our eternal benefit…but also for the benefit of others as God works out His plans through us to unselfishly minister to other people…as in the case of Abraham and Sarah…to produce physical and spiritual descendants…in fact as precisely promised by God…as numerous as the stars in the night sky.
Abraham and Sarah simply cannot produce Isaac…by themselves…according to conventional norms and thinking…on their own. This is by purposeful design. Like it or not, they need help from God.
A journey of faith composed by God will have this difficult and frustrating element…downright annoying at times according to our horizontally conventional thinking…of dependence upon God…involving some goal or outcome beyond our reach…usually beyond our initial imagination as we begin our faith journey…that requires God-sovereignty rather than self-sovereignty…to actualize and bring these outcomes into empirical reality.
If we are looking for convincing evidence to differentiate the biblical narrative stories of faith…from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to make the case that these biblical life-scripts could not be the product of human literary invention…another telling argument in this direction is the diametric opposites of our ways versus God’s ways as depicted in the biblical narrative stories of faith.
Anyone who follows the biblical God deep enough into their adventure of faith eventually runs experientially into the jarring realization, at some point in time, that we want to do things…even the big things like the fulfillment of the supernatural promises of God in our lives…our way.
This is one of the fundamental aspects of the Bible that creates a clearly delineated fork-in-the-road…a radical departure…away from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is an aspect in our Christian discipleship that takes us on a unique journey far from conventional thinking and norms.
Abraham naturally has his own ideas about how he will become the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…and his ideas do not include waiting 25 years for the birth of Isaac…the son of promise.
This important piece of information God left out of the initial calling of Abraham…for the best and highest reason imaginable…to set up the unique context for biblical faith…to actualize.
According to contemporary Christian jargon…doing something our way outside of the council or participation of God…is popularly called an “Ishmael”…doomed to failure.
Abraham and Sarah trying to help-out God in fulfilling God’s plans and promise…by bringing Hagar into the picture and thus producing Ishmael…actually goes against-the-grain of the best and highest outcome in this Abraham storyline…in at least two ways.
First, the main goal…the outcome that the life-script of Abraham hones-in on…is not the start of a large family-life according to worldly expectations and aspirations…but rather for Abraham to become the “father of faith”…of biblical faith that by commonsense definition requires elements of patience, trust, and faith.
But faith and trust in who and in what? Not in himself…not in his plans…not in his ideas…not in self-realization and self-reliance. This is the dividing point…the departure…away from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…that is unique to the Bible.
Certainly the God-composed life-script for Abraham and Sarah could have had Sarah becoming pregnant soon after their arrival in Canaan…with several children following thereafter…producing a conventionally normal family life…in which it could be said of Abraham and Sarah: “and they lived happily forever after.”
But this is not the life-script for Abraham and Sarah. Normal marital relations are not working. The promised descendants…as numerous as the stars in the night sky…are nowhere in sight.
This is where the second main theme of the story comes into play. In a God-composed journey of faith life-script…God writes into the plotline of events and circumstances a dependence upon Himself…that has an outcome…a goal…that requires supernatural intervention…every time throughout the Bible.
This is the point where our ways and God’s ways divide. This is where self-sovereignty separates from God-sovereignty. This is where the biblical narrative stories of faith depart from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is one of the compelling reasons why the biblical narrative stories of faith could not possibly come from human literary invention.
Bluntly stated…we want the promises of God to be fulfilled in our lives…our way according to worldly conventionality…and they can’t be if they are to have any eternal value.
This rude and shocking reality is not only for our eternal benefit…but also for the benefit of others as God works out His plans through us to unselfishly minister to other people…as in the case of Abraham and Sarah…to produce physical and spiritual descendants…in fact as precisely promised by God…as numerous as the stars in the night sky.
Abraham and Sarah simply cannot produce Isaac…by themselves…according to conventional norms and thinking…on their own. This is by purposeful design. Like it or not, they need help from God.
A journey of faith composed by God will have this difficult and frustrating element…downright annoying at times according to our horizontally conventional thinking…of dependence upon God…involving some goal or outcome beyond our reach…usually beyond our initial imagination as we begin our faith journey…that requires God-sovereignty rather than self-sovereignty…to actualize and bring these outcomes into empirical reality.
November 27, 2017
Proof does not Produce Biblical-Quality Faith
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
Coming back to my discussion with the agnostic/atheist man insisting on objective, visual, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity…for Christians the answer to this issue is both easy and difficult.
If Jesus a few days after the resurrection walked down the middle of main street and right into the temple in Jerusalem…then like doubting Thomas all of the common people along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes could examine His wounds and observe His resurrected new body…and accept as proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Son of God.
But accepting the visual evidence…producing absolute knowledge like two plus two equals four…or the existence of the noonday sun…accepting the evidence that Jesus is the divine Son of God is not the same as being willing to follow Him.
The Pharisees and scribes would have looked at the resurrected Jesus…talked with Him…examined His healed wounds…and then said: “Great…good for you…nothing has changed in our minds as a result of this newest miracle of yours…we still choose not to follow you…we will continue to go our own way”
For some unscrupulous and dishonest merchants selling their wares in the town marketplace…two-plus-two does not equal four…but five…a practice of “deceitful weights” denounced in the Old Testament in Proverbs and by the prophet Micah (Prov. 20:23; Mic. 6:11).
Having a system of standard, empirical weights does not prevent the willful and determined abandonment of integrity through the misuse of deceitful weights…a successful yet dishonest practice designed to work around…to circumvent…to ignore the real facts (standard weights) in business transactions.
Absolute knowledge by visual, empirical observation does not address the basic problem…does not displace, remove, or shift the mindset of self-sovereignty…over into God-sovereignty.
Jesus walking into the temple in Jerusalem after His resurrection…offering absolute proof of His divinity in physically rising from the dead…surprisingly does not change the inner man…does not equate to everyone freely choosing to make Him Lord and Master of their lives.
After the resurrection…revealing Himself to the Pharisees and scribes would not have produced biblical faith…defined as willingly allowing God to displace our ways with His higher ways…as ancient in Jewish history as the calling of Abraham to leave Haran and go to Canaan…as basic to Judaism as it gets…and fundamental to the Christian concept of picking up our cross to follow Jesus.
Choosing to follow God…by purposeful, intentionally creative design…will always be a free-will, take-it-or-leave-it option…in first-century Jerusalem, in the present-day, and for all eternity in heaven.
This is the remarkably sublime beauty of the free-will, free-thinking, moral reasoning, non-robots that God created humans to be…with or without absolute, visual, foolproof evidence of His existence (Jn. 20:29).
The spiritual mystery of autonomous rebellion is therefore one of the key moral issues under examination in this life and this broken world.
A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand…that God initially takes people having hidden potential…yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13)…and through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith…aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns them into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.
This is one of the main themes of the Bible. Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies…others will push God away and follow their own course.
This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking…by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith and its persistent longevity.
Naturalism, if true should produce one monotonous, homogeneous human mindset…belief or unbelief…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the living world.
This should tell us…that as human beings…we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).
The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case in itself for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible…above and beyond humanistic literary invention.
Coming back to my discussion with the agnostic/atheist man insisting on objective, visual, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity…for Christians the answer to this issue is both easy and difficult.
If Jesus a few days after the resurrection walked down the middle of main street and right into the temple in Jerusalem…then like doubting Thomas all of the common people along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes could examine His wounds and observe His resurrected new body…and accept as proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Son of God.
But accepting the visual evidence…producing absolute knowledge like two plus two equals four…or the existence of the noonday sun…accepting the evidence that Jesus is the divine Son of God is not the same as being willing to follow Him.
The Pharisees and scribes would have looked at the resurrected Jesus…talked with Him…examined His healed wounds…and then said: “Great…good for you…nothing has changed in our minds as a result of this newest miracle of yours…we still choose not to follow you…we will continue to go our own way”
For some unscrupulous and dishonest merchants selling their wares in the town marketplace…two-plus-two does not equal four…but five…a practice of “deceitful weights” denounced in the Old Testament in Proverbs and by the prophet Micah (Prov. 20:23; Mic. 6:11).
Having a system of standard, empirical weights does not prevent the willful and determined abandonment of integrity through the misuse of deceitful weights…a successful yet dishonest practice designed to work around…to circumvent…to ignore the real facts (standard weights) in business transactions.
Absolute knowledge by visual, empirical observation does not address the basic problem…does not displace, remove, or shift the mindset of self-sovereignty…over into God-sovereignty.
Jesus walking into the temple in Jerusalem after His resurrection…offering absolute proof of His divinity in physically rising from the dead…surprisingly does not change the inner man…does not equate to everyone freely choosing to make Him Lord and Master of their lives.
After the resurrection…revealing Himself to the Pharisees and scribes would not have produced biblical faith…defined as willingly allowing God to displace our ways with His higher ways…as ancient in Jewish history as the calling of Abraham to leave Haran and go to Canaan…as basic to Judaism as it gets…and fundamental to the Christian concept of picking up our cross to follow Jesus.
Choosing to follow God…by purposeful, intentionally creative design…will always be a free-will, take-it-or-leave-it option…in first-century Jerusalem, in the present-day, and for all eternity in heaven.
This is the remarkably sublime beauty of the free-will, free-thinking, moral reasoning, non-robots that God created humans to be…with or without absolute, visual, foolproof evidence of His existence (Jn. 20:29).
The spiritual mystery of autonomous rebellion is therefore one of the key moral issues under examination in this life and this broken world.
A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand…that God initially takes people having hidden potential…yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13)…and through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith…aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns them into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.
This is one of the main themes of the Bible. Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies…others will push God away and follow their own course.
This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking…by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith and its persistent longevity.
Naturalism, if true should produce one monotonous, homogeneous human mindset…belief or unbelief…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the living world.
This should tell us…that as human beings…we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).
The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case in itself for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible…above and beyond humanistic literary invention.
In This Book
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
In this book, I attempt to add some commonsense Christian apologetic arguments into the ongoing debate. Some such topics are:
First, is there a persuasive rationale to explain the humility of Jesus…above and outside of the standard and perfectly valid explanation that this is simply part of the divine character of God?
Is there an ingenious, underlying theme within the humility of Jesus that transcends far above the imagination of human literary invention…and at the same time serves as inspiration for Christians?
Does the humility component of the life-script of Jesus Christ surgically divide out and expose the negative aspect of rebellious self-sovereignty…resulting in the totally unjustified rejection and non-valuing of the Son of God Jesus…in a way that forever separates out the moral downside of: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6)…as demonstrated clearly through the cross of Christ at Calvary (Jn. 15:18-25)?
Second, how would anyone other than God compose a life-script for a perfect person Jesus Christ that gets Him to the cross? Is this idea far too original and innovative…as to fall clearly outside of human literary imagination…and therefore be divine in its origin?
What faulty, highlighted aspects of the human character would be accurately identified in this divine life-script composition…that would infuriate worldly conventional thinking to such a degree in first-century Israel…that would get a perfect person Jesus all the way to the cross…and not to mere house arrest, exile, or censure?
Third, how could anyone other than God compose a life-script complex enough for Jesus Christ the Son of God…that results in His broken heart on the cross (blood and water coming out of His pierced side…a modern medical description of a ruptured heart…John 19:34)?
How do you break the heart of God…as humanistically invented literary fiction…without at the same time violating the very thing that worldly conventional normalcy and thinking detests the most…that wants to sweep under the rug and ignore at all cost…the acknowledging of the existence of human sin and self-centeredness… heartbreakingly absorbed as a mass of evil and human wrongdoing…by Jesus on the cross as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin?
Fourth, where does the delicate balance of belief and unbelief come from? Why isn’t this balance overwhelmed in favor of one direction or the other?
Fifth, what explains the odd existence of the two main contrasting worldviews…self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty…for human beings alone?
This dichotomy clearly does not originate from nature. Lions display only one lifestyle habit…there are not two different competing approaches to being a lion. The same goes for every living creature in nature. For every living creature each lifestyle habit is distinctly unique…but uniform throughout that creature type…for lions, cheetahs, leopards, tigers, elephants, giraffes, alligators, and zebras, for example.
Yet humans have two optional worldviews to freely choose from…self-sovereignty or God-sovereignty…both radically different in the course and purpose of our lives. The complexity of the differences that divide these two worldviews is far beyond any plausible explanation of their origin by way of the naturalistic, gradual trial-and-error evolution of material particles and energy as asserted in the theoretical framework of Darwinism.
In this book, I attempt to add some commonsense Christian apologetic arguments into the ongoing debate. Some such topics are:
First, is there a persuasive rationale to explain the humility of Jesus…above and outside of the standard and perfectly valid explanation that this is simply part of the divine character of God?
Is there an ingenious, underlying theme within the humility of Jesus that transcends far above the imagination of human literary invention…and at the same time serves as inspiration for Christians?
Does the humility component of the life-script of Jesus Christ surgically divide out and expose the negative aspect of rebellious self-sovereignty…resulting in the totally unjustified rejection and non-valuing of the Son of God Jesus…in a way that forever separates out the moral downside of: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6)…as demonstrated clearly through the cross of Christ at Calvary (Jn. 15:18-25)?
Second, how would anyone other than God compose a life-script for a perfect person Jesus Christ that gets Him to the cross? Is this idea far too original and innovative…as to fall clearly outside of human literary imagination…and therefore be divine in its origin?
What faulty, highlighted aspects of the human character would be accurately identified in this divine life-script composition…that would infuriate worldly conventional thinking to such a degree in first-century Israel…that would get a perfect person Jesus all the way to the cross…and not to mere house arrest, exile, or censure?
Third, how could anyone other than God compose a life-script complex enough for Jesus Christ the Son of God…that results in His broken heart on the cross (blood and water coming out of His pierced side…a modern medical description of a ruptured heart…John 19:34)?
How do you break the heart of God…as humanistically invented literary fiction…without at the same time violating the very thing that worldly conventional normalcy and thinking detests the most…that wants to sweep under the rug and ignore at all cost…the acknowledging of the existence of human sin and self-centeredness… heartbreakingly absorbed as a mass of evil and human wrongdoing…by Jesus on the cross as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin?
Fourth, where does the delicate balance of belief and unbelief come from? Why isn’t this balance overwhelmed in favor of one direction or the other?
Fifth, what explains the odd existence of the two main contrasting worldviews…self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty…for human beings alone?
This dichotomy clearly does not originate from nature. Lions display only one lifestyle habit…there are not two different competing approaches to being a lion. The same goes for every living creature in nature. For every living creature each lifestyle habit is distinctly unique…but uniform throughout that creature type…for lions, cheetahs, leopards, tigers, elephants, giraffes, alligators, and zebras, for example.
Yet humans have two optional worldviews to freely choose from…self-sovereignty or God-sovereignty…both radically different in the course and purpose of our lives. The complexity of the differences that divide these two worldviews is far beyond any plausible explanation of their origin by way of the naturalistic, gradual trial-and-error evolution of material particles and energy as asserted in the theoretical framework of Darwinism.
November 26, 2017
God Didn't Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
Introduction
“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Heb. 11:6)
I once had a lively discussion with a borderline agnostic/atheist who said that he did not dismiss the idea that God existed…but that to believe and have faith he needed more objective, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible and Christianity.
In pondering our talk afterwards, I thought of all of the evidences that are out there in the observable world…easily accessible through commonsense contemplation…that in the hands of a skilled litigator in a courtroom…for example…would not only convince most jurors of the existence of God…but also of the divine origin of the Bible and its message.
In better hands than mine (except when I have the anointing of the Holy Spirit…like Peter before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:8-12 or Philip in Acts 8:26-40…which can be experienced by all Spirit-born Christians for sharing our faith in Jesus Christ with boldness and conviction)…there are dozens of categories of very persuasive arguments for the existence of God…many of which contain the obvious “miracles” we experience and see all around us…that we accept as “normal” and take totally for granted.
A few of these obvious evidences might be the “miracle” of sexuality…or digestion…or our respiratory system…our constant heartbeat…or our balanced and symmetrical locomotion and motor skills…all of which shout-out for ingenious design rather than random chance assemblage.
Another obvious evidence for the existence of an intelligent designer God…easily accessible to ordinary, commonsense consideration…is the universal cuteness of any infant---a human toddler, a lion cub, a Labrador puppy, a baby elephant, young ducklings swimming after their mother in a pond…possessing the most sublimely complex and artistic information content…yet totally inexplicable and unnecessary under a Darwinian naturalistic framework…having no survival-of-the-fittest value whatsoever…but otherwise easily understood as a product of intentional, whimsical, premeditated design.
Certainly the mystery of human speech and the natural inclination of youngsters to acquire, understand, and accurately differentiate subtle concepts in language and communication…at a phenomenal rate of speed…is a reality far too complex and incredibly integrated to be lightly and uncritically accepted as the result of gradualistic, chance descent-with-modification…rather than conscious, deliberate design at a brilliantly creative, extremely advanced level.
In sports…our incredible facility to be able to play professional ice hockey in the NHL…to run back the opening kick-off 100 yards for a touchdown in college football…to hit a 95-mph fastball 400 feet over the left-field fence for a homerun in baseball…to play tennis, pin-pong, badminton, volleyball, run the 100-meter sprint in track & field, run a marathon, complete the Tour de France, surf the North Shore in Hawaii, and score a goal in World Cup soccer…these are physical acuities that are so advanced, so complex, so finely tuned, and so functionally integrated…that to ascribe their origin to gradualistic, random chance, trial-and-error processes as asserted in the theory of Darwinian evolution…when we see and observe nothing incrementally progressive and transitional in a major, creative sense anywhere in the natural world…currently or in the course of natural history…seems on its face to be nonsensical.
Certainly the existence of the moral framework that permeates all of the social interactions between people…which we take totally for granted… needs explanation…such things as romantic love, friendship, loyalty, bravery, humor, forgiveness, standing up for the right thing even when it costs us something, giving value to other people through respect…and the flip-side---lying, cheating, prejudice, selfishness, injustice, and evil…all of which in the hands of a skilled debater could be persuasively argued to be far beyond the creative naturalistic reach of material particles and energy…given that particles and energy demonstrate no capacity for creating complex and functionally integrated systems or concepts.
Add to this the mind-boggling Age of Information explosion of the last two or three decades…in which intelligence has been linked to the origin of information wherever we find complex and functionally integrated systems in human creations…in computer software codes, literary books of every genre, inventions of every type…which correspond to the information-rich systems we find in the natural world such as the Big Bang, the Anthropic Principle, the Cambrian Explosion, the DNA code, the laws of science, and the body-plan architectures and lifestyle habits of every living creature…to name only a few examples.
Curiously, in the area of the fine arts…we see the seemingly unavoidable necessity of the inclusion of the overcoming of evil…of the “good” cowboys wearing white hats rounding up the “bad” cowboys wearing black hats…fundamental as a satisfying through-line within the storyline fabric of movies, theater plays, and books…coming from a modern popular culture that otherwise outwardly claims to avoid the acknowledgment of the concept of biblical sin.
How can the existence and complexity of good and evil…sliced-and-diced in every which way in enumerable, fictional storyline settings and conditions…of unending fascination and interest to the human psyche…how can the plausible explanation for the existence of this complex reality be the sole product of material particles and energy…according to the philosophical worldview of naturalism?
The mere existence of the word forgiveness in our vocabulary and in our dictionary argues for a transcendent capacity for moral reasoning and intelligent judgment far above the rest of the natural living world.
The origin of the concept of falling short of some independent standard of behavior and thinking…requiring us to ask forgiveness from other people we have harmed or offended…in a materialistic Darwinian worldview has no survival-of-the-fittest value…and ascribes to the capacity of material particles and energy a broadly theoretical, God-like potential for creating premeditated end-points such as forgiveness…in the realm of moral reasoning.
A final example for the purposes of this opening introduction…representing one amongst tens of thousands of similar everyday commonsense examples that could be persuasive evidence argued in a court of law…in favor of the necessity of an intelligent designer God…is the existence of our navel…our “belly button”…the umbilical cord between mother and baby that is severed and tied at childbirth. Every human has one.
Is there a plausible series of sequential, progressive, gradualistic, random-chance events that would serve as a functional, intermediate bridge between the initial trial-and-error dysfunctional umbilical cord leading to immediate death of the human fetus at the very start…to a totally functional assemblage producing a viable fetus reaching the point in time of nine-month maturity and a healthy childbirth…whereupon the umbilical cord is cut-off from the placenta and tied into a knot?
Commonsense reasoning tells us that this one feature…amongst possibly millions of other complex and tightly sequenced and integrated features…of a functional umbilical cord with all of its complex processes…must be up and running at just the right time in the embryonic development process of the human fetus occurring within the mother…for successful human reproduction to occur.
The quality and the accuracy of the biological information codes and specifications…extrapolated out to every part of the human body to produce a functional living and reproducing organism…argues at the surface level of commonsense…for brilliantly intelligent design.
The steady advance of human scientific discovery has produced such a deep and detailed understanding of how things work…in our own bodies such as how we produce speech, how we hear, and how we see…extended out into all of the areas of scientific inquiry from the microscopic atomic level to the galactic scale of the astrophysics of our universe…that the information content is now so vast…that a previous naturalistic explanation for the folding of amino acids into proteins did not even exist 100 years ago at the start of the twentieth century…because this area of microbiological knowledge had not even been discovered yet.
The current discoveries in science…with the new awareness of their accompanying explosion of information content…in highly complex and coherent systems…undermines all theories based on the simplistic methodologies of random chance, trial-and-error search strategies.
What could pass as an “explanation”…as a placeholder for ignorance 50 or 100 years ago under the guise of naturalistic philosophy posing as science…is now overwhelmed by the sheer volume and magnitude of complex and integrated systems of information that fall outside the chance probability of mathematics.
A naturalistic, Darwinian explanation for the complex phenomenon we now understand better in the living and non-living world…no longer “holds water” in this new Age of Information.
As a non-scholar layman in the areas of theology and biblical studies…along with millions of other common Christians around the world simply following Jesus within their journeys of faith…I sense that the centuries-old paradigm conflict between philosophical atheism and Christianity is at a balanced apex…at a tipping-point where the evidences for theism may now begin…if they have not already…to surpass the now archaic logic and arguments against supernaturalism and the miraculous in the Bible.
The Big Bang creation of the universe philosophically opened wide the door for intelligent agency…introducing in the first split-seconds of creation all of the natural laws of physics, chemistry, and mathematics… along with time itself…and all of the material particles in the right quantities and proportions to produce the universe we now observe today…out of absolute nothing…sometime around 14 billion years ago.
If an independent agent God can do this at the beginning of the universe…create something out of nothing…along with the accompanying physical laws out of nothing…then the philosophical objection by skeptics that God cannot introduce creative life and “miracles” into the natural world…a natural world incorrectly viewed by some as a “closed system” up until a few decades ago…is now debunked by the discoveries of modern science through the identification of massive amounts of complex and functionally integrated systems of information…everywhere we look in the living and non-living natural world.
The concept of an independent agent…God…injecting vast amounts of complex information into our world utilizing creative foresight…such as the DNA code…the unimaginably brilliant folding of amino acids into proteins…and the body-plan architectural information stored somewhere in the embryonic developmental structure of the living cell that builds cells and tells them their unique function and location in the dividing and expanding embryo…is very similar to our own use of accumulated information and creative foresight in the planned and premeditated assembly of houses, automobiles, airplanes, laptop computers, and pharmaceutical medicines.
“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Heb. 11:6)
I once had a lively discussion with a borderline agnostic/atheist who said that he did not dismiss the idea that God existed…but that to believe and have faith he needed more objective, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible and Christianity.
In pondering our talk afterwards, I thought of all of the evidences that are out there in the observable world…easily accessible through commonsense contemplation…that in the hands of a skilled litigator in a courtroom…for example…would not only convince most jurors of the existence of God…but also of the divine origin of the Bible and its message.
In better hands than mine (except when I have the anointing of the Holy Spirit…like Peter before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:8-12 or Philip in Acts 8:26-40…which can be experienced by all Spirit-born Christians for sharing our faith in Jesus Christ with boldness and conviction)…there are dozens of categories of very persuasive arguments for the existence of God…many of which contain the obvious “miracles” we experience and see all around us…that we accept as “normal” and take totally for granted.
A few of these obvious evidences might be the “miracle” of sexuality…or digestion…or our respiratory system…our constant heartbeat…or our balanced and symmetrical locomotion and motor skills…all of which shout-out for ingenious design rather than random chance assemblage.
Another obvious evidence for the existence of an intelligent designer God…easily accessible to ordinary, commonsense consideration…is the universal cuteness of any infant---a human toddler, a lion cub, a Labrador puppy, a baby elephant, young ducklings swimming after their mother in a pond…possessing the most sublimely complex and artistic information content…yet totally inexplicable and unnecessary under a Darwinian naturalistic framework…having no survival-of-the-fittest value whatsoever…but otherwise easily understood as a product of intentional, whimsical, premeditated design.
Certainly the mystery of human speech and the natural inclination of youngsters to acquire, understand, and accurately differentiate subtle concepts in language and communication…at a phenomenal rate of speed…is a reality far too complex and incredibly integrated to be lightly and uncritically accepted as the result of gradualistic, chance descent-with-modification…rather than conscious, deliberate design at a brilliantly creative, extremely advanced level.
In sports…our incredible facility to be able to play professional ice hockey in the NHL…to run back the opening kick-off 100 yards for a touchdown in college football…to hit a 95-mph fastball 400 feet over the left-field fence for a homerun in baseball…to play tennis, pin-pong, badminton, volleyball, run the 100-meter sprint in track & field, run a marathon, complete the Tour de France, surf the North Shore in Hawaii, and score a goal in World Cup soccer…these are physical acuities that are so advanced, so complex, so finely tuned, and so functionally integrated…that to ascribe their origin to gradualistic, random chance, trial-and-error processes as asserted in the theory of Darwinian evolution…when we see and observe nothing incrementally progressive and transitional in a major, creative sense anywhere in the natural world…currently or in the course of natural history…seems on its face to be nonsensical.
Certainly the existence of the moral framework that permeates all of the social interactions between people…which we take totally for granted… needs explanation…such things as romantic love, friendship, loyalty, bravery, humor, forgiveness, standing up for the right thing even when it costs us something, giving value to other people through respect…and the flip-side---lying, cheating, prejudice, selfishness, injustice, and evil…all of which in the hands of a skilled debater could be persuasively argued to be far beyond the creative naturalistic reach of material particles and energy…given that particles and energy demonstrate no capacity for creating complex and functionally integrated systems or concepts.
Add to this the mind-boggling Age of Information explosion of the last two or three decades…in which intelligence has been linked to the origin of information wherever we find complex and functionally integrated systems in human creations…in computer software codes, literary books of every genre, inventions of every type…which correspond to the information-rich systems we find in the natural world such as the Big Bang, the Anthropic Principle, the Cambrian Explosion, the DNA code, the laws of science, and the body-plan architectures and lifestyle habits of every living creature…to name only a few examples.
Curiously, in the area of the fine arts…we see the seemingly unavoidable necessity of the inclusion of the overcoming of evil…of the “good” cowboys wearing white hats rounding up the “bad” cowboys wearing black hats…fundamental as a satisfying through-line within the storyline fabric of movies, theater plays, and books…coming from a modern popular culture that otherwise outwardly claims to avoid the acknowledgment of the concept of biblical sin.
How can the existence and complexity of good and evil…sliced-and-diced in every which way in enumerable, fictional storyline settings and conditions…of unending fascination and interest to the human psyche…how can the plausible explanation for the existence of this complex reality be the sole product of material particles and energy…according to the philosophical worldview of naturalism?
The mere existence of the word forgiveness in our vocabulary and in our dictionary argues for a transcendent capacity for moral reasoning and intelligent judgment far above the rest of the natural living world.
The origin of the concept of falling short of some independent standard of behavior and thinking…requiring us to ask forgiveness from other people we have harmed or offended…in a materialistic Darwinian worldview has no survival-of-the-fittest value…and ascribes to the capacity of material particles and energy a broadly theoretical, God-like potential for creating premeditated end-points such as forgiveness…in the realm of moral reasoning.
A final example for the purposes of this opening introduction…representing one amongst tens of thousands of similar everyday commonsense examples that could be persuasive evidence argued in a court of law…in favor of the necessity of an intelligent designer God…is the existence of our navel…our “belly button”…the umbilical cord between mother and baby that is severed and tied at childbirth. Every human has one.
Is there a plausible series of sequential, progressive, gradualistic, random-chance events that would serve as a functional, intermediate bridge between the initial trial-and-error dysfunctional umbilical cord leading to immediate death of the human fetus at the very start…to a totally functional assemblage producing a viable fetus reaching the point in time of nine-month maturity and a healthy childbirth…whereupon the umbilical cord is cut-off from the placenta and tied into a knot?
Commonsense reasoning tells us that this one feature…amongst possibly millions of other complex and tightly sequenced and integrated features…of a functional umbilical cord with all of its complex processes…must be up and running at just the right time in the embryonic development process of the human fetus occurring within the mother…for successful human reproduction to occur.
The quality and the accuracy of the biological information codes and specifications…extrapolated out to every part of the human body to produce a functional living and reproducing organism…argues at the surface level of commonsense…for brilliantly intelligent design.
The steady advance of human scientific discovery has produced such a deep and detailed understanding of how things work…in our own bodies such as how we produce speech, how we hear, and how we see…extended out into all of the areas of scientific inquiry from the microscopic atomic level to the galactic scale of the astrophysics of our universe…that the information content is now so vast…that a previous naturalistic explanation for the folding of amino acids into proteins did not even exist 100 years ago at the start of the twentieth century…because this area of microbiological knowledge had not even been discovered yet.
The current discoveries in science…with the new awareness of their accompanying explosion of information content…in highly complex and coherent systems…undermines all theories based on the simplistic methodologies of random chance, trial-and-error search strategies.
What could pass as an “explanation”…as a placeholder for ignorance 50 or 100 years ago under the guise of naturalistic philosophy posing as science…is now overwhelmed by the sheer volume and magnitude of complex and integrated systems of information that fall outside the chance probability of mathematics.
A naturalistic, Darwinian explanation for the complex phenomenon we now understand better in the living and non-living world…no longer “holds water” in this new Age of Information.
As a non-scholar layman in the areas of theology and biblical studies…along with millions of other common Christians around the world simply following Jesus within their journeys of faith…I sense that the centuries-old paradigm conflict between philosophical atheism and Christianity is at a balanced apex…at a tipping-point where the evidences for theism may now begin…if they have not already…to surpass the now archaic logic and arguments against supernaturalism and the miraculous in the Bible.
The Big Bang creation of the universe philosophically opened wide the door for intelligent agency…introducing in the first split-seconds of creation all of the natural laws of physics, chemistry, and mathematics… along with time itself…and all of the material particles in the right quantities and proportions to produce the universe we now observe today…out of absolute nothing…sometime around 14 billion years ago.
If an independent agent God can do this at the beginning of the universe…create something out of nothing…along with the accompanying physical laws out of nothing…then the philosophical objection by skeptics that God cannot introduce creative life and “miracles” into the natural world…a natural world incorrectly viewed by some as a “closed system” up until a few decades ago…is now debunked by the discoveries of modern science through the identification of massive amounts of complex and functionally integrated systems of information…everywhere we look in the living and non-living natural world.
The concept of an independent agent…God…injecting vast amounts of complex information into our world utilizing creative foresight…such as the DNA code…the unimaginably brilliant folding of amino acids into proteins…and the body-plan architectural information stored somewhere in the embryonic developmental structure of the living cell that builds cells and tells them their unique function and location in the dividing and expanding embryo…is very similar to our own use of accumulated information and creative foresight in the planned and premeditated assembly of houses, automobiles, airplanes, laptop computers, and pharmaceutical medicines.
