R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 108
July 28, 2013
Sometimes There is Ice Cream
Carpe diem: enjoying life is part of God’s purpose for you.
At the end of the creation of the universe, God looked at the finished product and the author of Genesis commented, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” The birds and animals, the plants, the people, everything that exists anywhere: all good.
The fact that grace abounds where sin abounds, Paul argued, did not mean that we should therefore sin as much as possible in order to maximize the grace that God would grant us. Likewise, although God is near us when we suffer, that doesn’t mean we should maximize our suffering in order to get God closer to us. The point is that in our darkest moments, when we would be tempted to imagine God is not there, we are reassured that indeed he is present. Only a loon would imagine that suffering is a desired goal.
The history of religion is riddled with people who think that way though. They withdraw from “the world” meaning they go and live in a cloistered setting, embrace poverty, wear ugly clothes that don’t fit well and are uncomfortable. Traipsing about barefoot in snow is a welcome opportunity. Sleeping as little as possible, and then only on cold hard ground without a blanket, while eating as little as possible and then only bland and “simple” fare is seen as the path to truth spirituality, the best way to approach nearness or even oneness with God.
As Penn and Teller might say in the eponymous Showtime series, “Bullshit.”
God created us to be like we are: to sweat, to get tired, to make love, to touch and feel, to laugh and cry. We rejoice in what we feel, what we taste, what we see, what we touch. The world around us is full of pleasures, of satisfactions, of enjoyment, and it is there for the purpose of being enjoyed.
There is no virtue in denying our senses, in pretending that we don’t feel, or in seeking discomfort instead of pleasure. We are not closer to God, we are not more spiritual, if we refrain from anything that might be fun. Why is the sun warm, the air filled with the smell of sweet flowers, the grass green, the water wet? Why is there pizza, and bread and fruit? Do we cringe from pain? Why does the noxious, the painful, the ugly and the uncomfortable make us flinch away? Why are we attracted to the pleasant, the sweet, the warm, the loving, the happy? Jesus was human like that. He loved life; he felt life. He experienced the full range of emotions. And you know what? We human beings were created in God’s image; we’re just like him, the lot of us. So feeling, being alive—these were not new experiences to Jesus; God knew those feelings; God has those feelings. Feelings, emotions—they’re not an evil thing. They simply are, like the blue in the sky, or the wet in water.
It is funny that we choose to believe the lie that the serpent gave Adam and Eve. What lie is that? “He doesn’t want you to have this fruit, because he knows that when you take it you’ll be just like him. So obviously God is holding out. He’s keeping something good from you! He doesn’t have your best interests in mind. Instead, he wants you to be unhappy. In fact, he never wants you to be joyful and peaceful ever again.”
How much of Christianity is built on this same squirrelly attitude? After all, how often do we read with approval, or view with approval, people who gave up everything so they could do God’s work or be closer to God? They sold everything they owned, they lived in a cave, their clothes were burlap and the slept on cold hard dirt. On account of that, we know they were especially holy and close to God, because the way to get close to God is to abandon anything that might be fun. If you’re smiling and eating and drinking, then you can’t possibly be close to God. It’s only in fasting and self-denial and misery and poverty that God can be found.
Yeah, right. And so Jesus himself was criticized by the Pharisees and other religious sorts because his disciples didn’t fast, and because he frequented parties where he ate good food and drank good drink (Matthew 9:14 and 11:19).
Why is it so hard to understand that God’s love is not dependent on how often we deny ourselves ice cream?
July 27, 2013
The Process: Your Life as a Christian
Another of my books is now available as an ebook from Amazon for the Kindle: The Process: Your Life as a Christian
How do you go about growing spiritually? What does it take? Peter explains that God has already given you everything you’ll ever need:
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:3)
There is nothing else to find, nothing to add, nothing to build.
And yet Peter goes on to speak about growth:
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. (2 Peter 1:5-7)
How can you grow, develop—progress—if you already have everything you need from God? This book follows the process of spiritual growth as outlined by Peter: a process that on the face of it is a paradox
Peter lists eight processes that are linked intimately to one another in spiritual growth.
They are:
1. Faith
2. Goodness
3. Wisdom
4. Self-control
5. Perseverance
6. Godliness
7. Brotherly Kindness
8. Love
This book is organized into eight chapters, according to Peter’s eight topics; each chapter includes study questions which take the following format:
1. Pre-Study—these are questions the reader should stop and answer before he or she proceeds. It is recommended that the reader write down his or her answers to all the questions posed in this book.
2 Self Study—these are questions along the way that may help clarify or solidify points that have been discussed.
3. Round Up—these are questions at the conclusion of each chapter that review the topics covered; it is hoped that the questions will force self-examination and will help the reader measure what he or she has learned.
This book may be used for individual or group study. If it is used for group study, it is recommended that the students answer at least the Pre-Study questions before meeting together; this will help facilitate discussion.
July 26, 2013
The Image
Genesis 1:26-27 records God announcing:
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
The source of human rights, at least from the Jewish and Christian perspective, has its origin in that statement. Human beings—the human race as a complete whole, both male and female together—form the image of God. Together, we are like God and have been made for the express purpose of “playing God,” just as we expect our children to some day grow up and become like us: full fledged adults with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. Given that the human race has been made like God, human beings are of infinite worth, regardless of their age, gender, or race. We are all one, all together, one family. It should be inconceivable that we would ever mistreat or harm or denigrate one another, as bizarre as to imagine the Father harming the Holy Spirit or persecuting his Son.
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July 25, 2013
Just In Time
There is a tendency for human beings to create God in their own image. Many seem to picture him as an old man, like their grandfather with a white beard, sitting in a comfy chair somewhere. But the Bible never easily permits such anthropomorphizing. The author of Revelation and the author of Psalms, for instance, remind us in a profound way just how “other” God is. In Revelation, we learn that Jesus has been slain “from the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13:8) while in Psalm 90:4 the Psalmist informs us that “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” Peter picks up on this thought in one of his letters, writing, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8)
God’s relationship to our universe, to us, is not quite how we might conceive it. While we exist in time, experiencing time linearly, God’s relationship is radically different. The passage of time does not affect him like it affects us. He does not experience it as we experience it. His perception of it is even not like ours. St. Augustine wrote that time is a part of this universe and had its “beginning” with the beginning of the universe, so that it is remarkably ignorant to ask what was going on before God made the universe. There’s no before there; time is something we live with, not something God lives with, or in. So for him, he sees the ends of the universe—the beginning of time and it’s furthest future, all in a glance. For him, the panorama of human history is like a painting on the wall: the creation of Adam, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the Second Coming are all equally viewable and real, just like we can see any part of a painting.
Below is the link to a clip from the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 where Benjamin Sisko, the commander of the space station, first meets up with the “wormhole beings,” non-corporal, non-time-bound creatures who do not understand the concept of linear time. For them, various points in time are like different places; they can see it all at once. Unfortunately, the clip is incomplete; the entire segment is one of the best fictional presentations of the difference between God’s perspective and ours.
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July 24, 2013
God Loves You
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
The short answer to all our questions about God is simple: God is love.
Paul writes a bit more extensively and gives a bit more detail, building on the concept:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1-8)
If God hadn’t told us in the Bible that he loves us, we might not realize that he does. Anymore than that girl or boy you were enamored of in junior high had any clue how you felt, since you never worked up the courage to say anything.
The universe is not an obviously kind and loving sort of place, which is perhaps why the Bible so frequently informs us, both through the stories told in its pages, as well as through simple, declarative statements, that God loves us. John wrote that “God is love” while Paul reminds us what that means in the context of Jesus’ visit to this blue marble. Paul points out the obvious about human love: we love those who love us. We wouldn’t even think of being nice to someone who is cruel to us. But God’s love is remarkably inhuman. He writes, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While someone might be willing to die for a loved one, whether child or spouse, the chances of you willing to die for someone you don’t know, or worse, someone who is your enemy are slim and none. But God’s love is different from ours. It is not dependent upon performance. It doesn’t matter if you care, if you are nice to God, if you do what he asks or refrain from what he warns about. No matter how bad, rebellious or hateful you might be, God loves you and willing gave everything he had on your behalf. We don’t see that kind of love—a selfless, utterly altruistic love—expressed between people. But that is God’s natural state in how he expresses himself toward us.
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July 23, 2013
The Temptation of God
Even God has faced temptation. God became a human being, and as a human being, he faced all the sorts of temptations that each of us experience (see Matthew 4:1-11 or Luke 4:1-13). Satan approached him once, after Jesus had spent a long time in the wilderness fasting a praying, The first temptation, therefore related to food: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
The second temptation related to pride. If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And the final temptation related to laziness: he was offered the world if he’d only bow down and worship Satan. That would have saved the trouble of dying on the cross to get it. Jesus told him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” And so Satan went away, at least for a little while.
In all the temptations described, Jesus resisted giving in. With each temptation, he quoted the Bible, demonstrating why it was necessary for him to resist the temptation.
Later, the author of Hebrews states that Jesus was tempted “in every way just like us” (Hebrews 4:15). We shouldn’t understand this to mean that every temptation ever faced by everyone who lived–say the temptations faced by Jack the Ripper, or the temptations faced by the current Pope or, or even my temptations to each too much pizza or sleep with someone I’m not married to were precisely the temptations that Jesus faced.
Jesus lived a long time before my fantasy woman or the existence of pizza and so he didn’t face those precise temptations. But being human, he would have faced the same sorts of temptations we all face: whether of lust, hunger, avarice, or anger. Jesus was God, but he was also completely and fully human, subject to the same needs and desires as all of us. That is the point the author of Hebrews wants us to understand.
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July 22, 2013
Know-it-All
God really is a genius. The Bible describes God as the source of all wisdom and knowledge. This makes sense, since God is described as the author of the universe; thus, everything that exists, even the world of ideas, would have to have God as its ultimate source.
Paul writes,
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
(Romans 12:19)
Why is it that God’s justice is best? Because he knows everything about the situation; when human beings look at a situation, a conflict, a crime, we see it only partially, through a glass darkly. We see it through our own prejudices and experiences. We do not know all the details, we do not know what was going on in the minds of those involved. There is more we don’t know than we do, and what we do is filtered rather than objective. Our justice system has many checks and balances in place to try to arrive at justice, but it is not perfect. It never can be perfect, because people are not perfect.
But God is not so limited. The Psalmist writes,
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
(Psalm 139:2-4)
Jeremiah, the prophet tells us,
“I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”
(Jeremiah 17:10)
Unlike pundits and Monday morning quarterbacks, God actually knows the reason someone says or does what they do; he understands it, and he can and will react accordingly and appropriately where we will often fail.
The whole context now of the “do not take revenge” passage quoted above:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:17-21)
As Christians, it is not our job to seek revenge or to get even. We are human and we will do it wrong. Leave it in God’s hands. What we can do, as human beings, is to be kind and loving. That’s harder for us to screw up.
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July 21, 2013
The Unexpected God
Elijah finds God where he least expected. After winning the God contest on Mount Carmel and slaughtering 450 prophets of Baal, Elijah had run in terror from Jezebel, the queen of Israel, after she threatened to kill him. Hiding in the wilderness, exhausted and discouraged, God took care of him and saw to his needs for food and shelter. Finally, one day while Elijah was hiding in a cave, God told him, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” (2 Kings 19:11)
A powerful wind tore at the mountains, shattering rocks, but “the LORD was not in the wind.” After that, there was an earthquake, but “the LORD was not in the earthquake.” Then a fire roared around him, but “the LORD was not in the fire”
Then, after the fire was gone, there was a gentle whisper.
God had come at last. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Elijah explained that he was alone, everyone had rejected God and everything that Elihah had preached. What was the point of going on? God told him not to be so gloomy: there were seven thousand people in Israel who remained faithful to Yahweh. Then God gave him his next job that he wanted him to do.
Where we expect to find God, how we expect God to behave, what we expect to see him accomplish, are often far removed from reality.
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July 20, 2013
Smarter than the Average Bear
When you read the story of Jonah in the Bible, if all you do is focus on the whale and wonder whether that’s even possible, then you’re missing the whole point of the story.
The point? That you’re not going to outwit God.
During the prophet Jonah’s day, Assyria was on the rise as a world power. It was a cruel, oppressive, blood-thirsty and imperialist empire, bent on world conquest—an existential threat to Israel’s existence.
One day God asked Jonah to warn Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, that God planned to destroy it for its wickedness. To get a sense of how such an order would bother Jonah, imagine it is 1938 and God told him to go to Berlin. So Jonah refused. He feared that if he went and delivered a prophecy from God, then the Assyrians would repent and then God would forgive them. And Jonah most certainly did not want the enemies of Israel and all that was good to be forgiven. He wanted them to be destroyed. He wanted to see God obliterate them.
So Jonah ran away. He was convinced that God would kill him for his disobedience. And with Jonah dead, there would be no one to prophecy to the Ninevites. And thus, deprived of Jonah’s warning, Nineveh would suffer its just fate and be destroyed. Jonah would get his way.
But Jonah soon learned that there were worse things than dying, and that God’s will could not be so easily thwarted.
Boarding a ship at Jaffa (modern Tel Aviv) he sailed west. A storm blew up. Jonah told the sailors that the storm was doubtless on his account. To make it stop, all they needed to do was toss him overboard.
At first they refused, but the storm grew worse and so they finally tossed him into the water. Immediately the storm ceased and a great fish swallowed him up. For the next three days Jonah sat angrily inside the fish. Unable to take it any longer, he at last cried out to God for rescue.
The fish made its way back to Jaffa and spat him up on the shore. Once again, God asked Jonah to make the trip to Nineveh. Deciding that he didn’t want to be eaten again—or worse—he finally obeyed God, went to Nineveh, and told the Assyrians that they were doomed. He did not happily obey God; he was angry the whole time, and just went through the motions. He said the bare minimum.
And was incredibly successful, unlike most prophets in the Bible. The Ninevites believed him and repented.
And things turned out just as Jonah feared: God forgave them. God then criticized Jonah for his lack of love and compassion.
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July 19, 2013
Moving Mountains, Parting Seas
Underestimating God is always a mistake. In Exodus 15 we see why.
The Israelites were a bunch of slaves trying to run away from their owner, which happened to be Egypt–at the time, the world’s most powerful nation. It wasn’t long after they left that they found themselves in the middle of the desert, facing the Red Sea, with no way across and the massive army of Egypt bearing down on them.
Nowhere to turn, no where to run, no way out. They were trapped, certain to face capture and a return to captivity–ot to mention whatever punishments the Egyptians might care to mete out for their attempt at running away.
But then a strange thing happened. The God who had made it possible for them to run away in the first place parted the waters and gave them a way out of the trap. Their pursuers, following them into the sea, soon drowned when the waters came tumbling down upon them. In surprise, the Israelites, standing upon that far shore, separated forever from their captors and now completely, finally realized that it was not a just a dream: the deepest longings of generations had been fulfilled.
For that brief shining moment, they realized that God hadn’t abandoned them, that he wasn’t toying with them, and that he did not intend to bring them disappointment and make them miserable. At that instant, they responded with a song of praise, thanking God for their deliverance. Of course, come the next crisis, they fell back into the place of doubting where they’ve lived their whole lives. It’s the same land of doubting where most of have made our homes. Very rarely do we even make it to the border fence and peer at the grass on the other side. Even more rarely do we open the one of the gates and leave. And we never leave for good.
Brittany was nearly eleven years old; a hyperactive, blue eyed blonde, she took in the news that the elderly woman, Miss Aileen, that her parents picked up and drove to church each Sunday was desperately ill with equanimity.
“She most likely had a heart attack,” her mother told her softly.
“So is she going to get better?”
“Probably not. She’s 83 years old and she’s in the hospital now.”
“We should pray for her.”
“Okay.” Her mother shrugged.
Brittany bowed her head. “Dear God, please help Miss Aileen to get well soon and come home from the hospital. Amen.”
Brittany’s mother frowned. She tried to tell Brittany that that was extremely unlikely that Miss Aileen would get better, but Brittany went out happily to play in the front yard, convinced that Miss Aileen would be just fine now.
“She’s going to be dead by morning,” Brittany’s mom told her husband. The husband nodded in agreement.
But come the next morning, Miss Aileen was not dead. And it turned out that it wasn’t a heart attack after all: it was her gall bladder. After surgery to take it out, Miss Aileen recovered and was moved to a nursing care facility. “No one gets out of places like that,” commented Brittany’s dad to her mom. “Those are just heaven’s waiting rooms.”
But another month later Miss Aileen left the nursing home and moved in with her son, as spry as ever.
“God answered my prayer, didn’t he mommy?” said Brittany. Her very surprised parents couldn’t help but agree.
God’s plans for us are good. He’s not trying to make us miserable. And he hasn’t lost his touch since he rescued the Israelites.
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