R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 60
November 16, 2014
SOS
“Whenever you fast, don’t be sad-faced like the hypocrites. For they make their faces unattractive so their fasting is obvious to people. I assure you: They’ve got their reward! But when you fast, put oil on your head, and wash your face, so that you don’t show your fasting to people but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“Don’t collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness—how deep is that darkness!
“No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and of money.” (Matthew 6:16–24)
Some people suffer from SOS: shiny object syndrome. They are easily distracted by whatever attractive thing happens to catch their eye. It is a common human failing, of course, an example of our general inability to properly distinguish between what’s best for us, and what will entertain us at this instant. We want to get rich quick. But the quick too often turns out to be nothing more than a shiny bit of glass.
Jesus asked those listening to him during his Sermon on the Mount to consider what motivated their behavior. Why do they do what they do? Are they doing good for God or are they doing good only for themselves? Were they motivated by the desire for the quick payoff? Were they good because of what the neighbors would think? Were they good because of what benefit they could derive from it? If so, Jesus argued that they really weren’t being good at all. Instead, they were simply working for their own selfish ends. They were working for a payment.
Serving God means being concerned with someone besides ourselves. In fact, our own benefit shouldn’t enter into the equation at all. True righteousness means focusing on others and forgetting entirely about what we might get out of it. We cannot be truly righteous if we’re concerned with what we’re going to get out of it too.
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November 14, 2014
Forgiveness
“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
“In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can’t get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.” (Matthew 6:9–15)
Why is God’s forgiveness dependent upon us forgiving others? The better question is to wonder why we would believe we should be forgiven when we are unwilling to forgive others. When we pray to God, we can only have from him what we believe he is willing to give. If we don’t forgive others, we obviously don’t really believe in forgiveness. If we have an unforgiving heart, we’re not going to truly believe that God can forgive us.
Forgiveness is an attitude. It is a choice that we make. We free ourselves from a prison of bitterness and anger if we forgive. When God forgives us, he’s not telling us that what we did didn’t matter, or that the suffering doesn’t matter, or that he’s okay with our actions. Forgiveness means he will not allow what we did to interfere with his relationship with us. He is telling us that we and his relationship with us is more important than the sin that would try to come between us. Forgiveness grows from love, from a concern for us that exceeds all else.
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November 13, 2014
November 12, 2014
The Will of God
He told them, “These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He also said to them, “This is what is written: the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And look, I am sending you what My Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.”
Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. And while He was blessing them, He left them and was carried up into heaven. After worshiping Him, they returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple complex blessing God. (Luke 24:44–53)
Just before Jesus returned to his Father in Heaven, he carefully reviewed what the scriptures had to say about him. He took them from the beginning in Genesis and traced himself all the way through until the end. Then he left them with final instructions about what they should be doing while he was gone.
He explained to his disciples that they wouldn’t on their own. Instead, they’d be “empowered from on high” when the Holy Spirit arrived during Pentecost, a festival also called the “Feast of Weeks” or Shavuot. In Exodus 23:16 it was called “the Feast of Harvest” during which the community was to show gratitude to God for the “first fruits,” that is, the early harvest. The holiday followed Passover by fifty days.
Jesus did not ask his disciples to take up arms against the Romans. He did not tell them to go into politics. Instead, he told them to proclaim the Good News that Jesus had died and risen and that forgiveness was available to all. It was not a complicated or difficult task.
Both young and old are concerned with discovering the will of God for their lives. But much of God’s will for our lives is obvious. For all of us, one of our primary purposes in life, whatever else we might do, is to bear witness to the people we know and meet of what Jesus has done for us and for our lives.
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November 11, 2014
Don’t Forget
I have already told you what the Lord Jesus did on the night he was betrayed. And it came from the Lord himself.
He took some bread in his hands. Then after he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Eat this and remember me.”
After the meal, Jesus took a cup of wine in his hands and said, “This is my blood, and with it God makes his new agreement with you. Drink this and remember me.”
The Lord meant that when you eat this bread and drink from this cup, you tell about his death until he comes.
But if you eat the bread and drink the wine in a way that isn’t worthy of the Lord, you sin against his body and blood. That’s why you must examine the way you eat and drink. If you fail to understand that you are the body of the Lord, you will condemn yourselves by the way you eat and drink. That’s why many of you are sick and weak and why a lot of others have died. If we carefully judge ourselves, we won’t be punished. (1 Corinthians 11:23–31)
“Remember me,” said Jesus as he broke the bread and shared the cup during that final Passover meal. Paul told the church in the Greek city of Corinth that Jesus wanted his people to remember him. The whole reason for the ceremony of communion was to remember Jesus: who he was and what he had done. Paul commented that whenever we shared in a communion meal we were telling about his death until he comes back again.
“Remember me,” said Jesus. Is there a danger that we might forget him, that he had to tell us to remember? Indeed. It is human nature to become distracted with our lives, with our daily concerns, with all the things we do that keep us so busy. We have to work, we have to sleep, we have to rest, we have to take care of our families, spend time with them, spend time with our friends. There is so much we have to do and it is inescapable and entirely necessary.
So Jesus told us that there was one more thing we had to do, one more responsibility in the midst of all our other responsibilities: we needed to remember him, to never forget what he did for us. Jesus died for us and lives for us, so that in him we might have our lives and have them more abundantly.
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November 10, 2014
Patmos
In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
“Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. (Revelation 1:16–20)
Jesus said that his followers had eternal life and that they would never perish. Then he added, “no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.” (John 10:29-30) At the beginning of the book of Revelation, John described his encounter with a glorified Jesus. In his hand were seven stars that represented the “angels,” that is the pastors of the seven churches in Asia Minor that Jesus’ letters were sent to.
John was in exile on a tiny island in the Mediterranean, suffering there for proclaiming the Good News. Christians throughout the Roman Empire were suffering just as John was, and often far worse. Many were dying for Jesus every day. Jesus words were comforting words, therefore, for John and for the people that John wrote the book of Revelation to. The Roman Empire might have believed itself to be in charge. It might even have looked like they were right. But the one who really was in charge, who really did have the power of life and death was not the Roman government who sent Christians to die in the arena. Instead, the real power belonged to Jesus, the one who had been killed by that Roman government, but who was now alive forever. Jesus had proven with his resurrection that he could undo whatever the Romans might try.
God is the one who is really in charge of our lives and our deaths. It is in his hands that we can relax, comforted in the knowledge that he will rescue us from those who imagine they can control or destroy us.
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November 9, 2014
Look Up
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:1–8)
Jesus told John to “come up here” so that he could show John what was going to happen “after this.” After this, is after all the suffering, all the pain, all the misery that the Christian people of the world were enduring.
The real source of power, the real throne where real decisions were made was not in the Emperor’s throne room in Rome. Instead, it was “up here.” Come up here, is something Moses did when God called him up to the mountain to receive the commandments. It was something many prophets experienced when they were “lifted up” in the Spirit. The vision of John of God’s throne room is a vision that would be recognizable to any Jewish person familiar with the Old Testament. The throne room as described by John makes its first appearance in Exodus 24:9-11, when Moses and Aaron, Aaron’s sons and the seventy elders of Israel see God and eat and drink with him.
Jesus asks us to “come up here” above our circumstances, to catch a glimpse of God in in his glory. There is more to life than just what we experience “down here.”
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November 8, 2014
Skunkworks
After I graduated from college, I needed a job to keep food on my table and to pay for my graduate work at UCLA. By the end of summer I’d found a job at the Burbank Airport collecting parking fees from travelers. While the airport itself belonged to the city, the parking lots were operated by Lockheed (the former owner of the airport) and so I worked for Lockheed.
Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks, where they designed and built top secret aircraft, was located right next to the airport. Often, as I drove away at the end of my shift, I could peek into its large hanger. They often left the doors open on warm summer evenings. Late at night, long after the airport had closed, the roar of jet engines would fill the air as a giant U.S. Air Force C-5 cargo plane landed, delivering only Lockheed knew what.
Years later, long after I had moved on to other employment, I learned that one of the cargos on those secret, graveyard shift flights was the F-117 stealth fighter. It was being ferried back and forth from the Groom Lake facility better known as Area 51.
In the years since, all of Lockheed’s facilities next to the Burbank Airport have been torn down. Where the Skunkworks once stood, there is now a Starbucks and a McDonalds.
But the Skunkworks endures. It has been relocated to a large hanger just off Sierra Highway in Palmdale, California—just a few blocks from where I live. And they still sometimes leave the doors open on warm summer evenings.
Recently, Lockheed revealed something they’ve been doing there, something more than just designing a new airplane. They have been working on a nuclear fusion reactor, a generator that can be used to produce clean, cheap, unlimited energy for cities, aircraft, ships, and even spacecraft. They claim to have achieved what researchers around the world, have unsuccessfully been attempting to do for the last fifty years.
It is a major technological breakthrough that will profoundly change the world.
Currently, all nuclear generators are fission reactors: atoms of uranium or plutonium are split apart in a controlled fashion, creating heat which can be used to boil water and make steam to turn turbines that then generate electricity. No pollution is created. But only about nineteen percent of the electricity in the United States is generated by such fission reactors. But all of America’s submarines and aircraft carriers use nuclear fission reactors to generate the power that drives them through the oceans. The advantage of nuclear power for naval vessels is that they have unlimited range: a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier can run for twenty years before needing to be refueled.
But there’s a downside to the current fission generators: they produce radioactive waste that is difficult to safely store. Worse, the waste can be processed to produce nuclear weapons (that’s why no one wants Iran to have a nuclear program, even one that is supposedly only for “peaceful purposes”). And if something ever goes wrong with a nuclear fission reactor, very bad things can happen. While fission reactors cannot explode, they can meltdown and release radiation into the environment, as happened at Chernoble and Fukiyama. And just finding, mining and processing the uranium and plutonium for the fission power plants is dangerous and difficult. And uranium is a limited resource.
All these problems disappear with nuclear fusion. Rather than splitting atoms, nuclear fusion works by slamming them together: a process releases more energy by orders of magnitude than any fission process. The sun is an example of a fusion reactor, and what scientists have been trying and failing to do up til now is to accomplish what the sun does on a much smaller scale. But how do you contain and controle a miniature sun? Apparently Lockheed has figured it out.
With nuclear fusion there are no radioactive byproducts. There is no possibility of a fusion reactor ever being used to create material for nuclear weapons. Even better, the fuel for a fusion reactor is not something rare, in limited quantities, expensive, or difficult to mine. The fuel for fusion comes from sea water: deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen (remember water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen). It is cheap and unlimited: we can never run out.
Lockheed expects to have a demonstration fusion generator up and running in less than a year. It will fit inside the trailer of a semi and will be able to generate enough electricity for 80,000 houses.
Fusion reactors have other uses: submarines and aircraft carriers could replace their fission reactors, cutting costs while increasing range. Commercial ships would now find nuclear power cost effective. Fusion reactors could be put in airplanes, giving them unlimited range: no need to refuel for decades. Tanks and other vehicles—such as trains and trucks could be powered by nuclear fusion rather than diesel or gasoline.
What about accidents? What if someone shot a hole in a fusion reactor?
It would simply stop working: there would be no radiation released, no explosions, and no meltdowns.
California is currently in the middle of a drought. If we could drink seawater and use it for agriculture, we wouldn’t have to worry about a shortage of rain. But right now, the cost of desalinization is prohibitive, largely due to the energy costs. But with fusion power, desalinization would be inexpensive. The oceans suddenly becomes useable for drinking and farming. Turning a desert like the Sahara into productive farmland would suddenly become economically feasible.
Currently it takes chemically powered spaceships about nine months to travel between the Earth and Mars—and ninety percent or more of the mass is fuel. Nuclear fusion would cut travel time to one month, while eliminating the bulk.
If Lockheed has actually managed what they claim, our world will change in ways we can barely imagine. The era of burning coal, natural gas, and oil will be over.
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November 7, 2014
The Projected Future
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