Brett Armstrong's Blog, page 9

Some Lessons Learned From My Little One (Part 4)

 

[image error]It’s been a few months since I did my earlier entries about things my little boy has taught me. Of course, he has been instructing me in all sorts of things since then. For instance, I never saw how heroic Stormtroopers from Star Wars could be until he took a liking to a figure he has named “Trooper”. But more potently, a recent trip to the beach showed me a lot about what it means to have faith.

We’ve been to the beach three times now with our little one. He probably only has vague memories of the previous two times, and this was our first trip of 2017, so he really hadn’t had to sleep anywhere but his own bedroom for a long time. It should come as no surprise that he was a little uncomfortable the first night at the hotel. I had to stay with him an extra-long time to convince him that the lamp in the room, which cast a rather nasty shadow, was okay. As were the sounds made by the A/C and the noises made by people above, below, and on our floor. I felt like a real dad hero when he fell asleep after my reassurances about his surroundings. Then came night #2. “Scared” became the anthem for the night and the rest of the trip. I came to dread having to put him down to sleep, because on a couple occasions my reassurances lasted nearly an hour and proved futile. No matter how many times I promised the lamp wouldn’t hurt him and that the A/C was a good thing so the sound it made wasn’t something be frightened by, he kept telling me he was scared. Or his stuffed doggy was scared. Or “Trooper” was scared. Or the Batmobile. I should note that my son doesn’t go to sleep very well at all if you stay to try to “see him to sleep”. It adds fuel to his fire and sometimes ends up in him not napping at all. He likes sleep and he definitely needs it, so we try to avoid missing sleep at all costs.

After a while I enlisted help. Mom came to the rescue and her tactic for calming him was amazingly simple, but not something I thought of. Unlike me, she didn’t get hung up in repetitive iterations of saying this or that was safe and that he didn’t need to be afraid. She simply told him she was going to be in the next room and could call to her when he needed her. Then she did just that and he did call out a few times. In fact, he still took a fair amount of time to settle in, but settle he did. And I was struck by how like our spiritual lives the scenario seemed.

How often do we get caught up in the circumstances of life and focus on the “lamps” in the room or the “sounds” that we hear? God promised to never leave or forsake His own. (Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5) But I confess, there are any number of times when I’ve let fear best me. Recently I had a battle with anxiety attacks. Still am battling to an extent, and perhaps that is why this struck me so hard. Just like I knew the situation so much better than my son, God knows ours so much better as well. Just like my wife and I were near, so God is near to us. If we do not feel His presence right beside us, there is a purpose to the distance and in that we can take great comfort. Because whereas I don’t always know what to do for my son, the Lord always knows how to care for His children.

The Case for a New View

 

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Today I watched the movie The Case for Christ. I won’t go into how I felt about the movie itself or even the arguments it presented, except one which really spoke to me, though probably at tangent from what the movie was intended. At one point Lee Strobel travels all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles to meet with a Dr.Metherell to discuss the medical aspects of Christ’s crucifixion. Specifically, Strobel was beginning to follow the swoon theory and had it shot down as the doctor outlined medical evidences for Christ’s death.

What really struck me was the visceral picture of Christ’s scourging and crucifixion presented. I knew the facts of it already, but something about having it explained by a physician, albeit vicariously through an actor, that made it more real to me. And the thought struck me, silly as it may sound, but this was serious. Christ’s death was serious, and raw, and agonizing and all that can and often does get abstracted away as an event of the past, but it shouldn’t. If Christ was on the cross for the reason the Gospels tell us, then what He did was a very personal act. It can’t be viewed in any other way. Accepted or not. Christ died to restore our relationships with God, and our response needs to be one that accounts for the depth of love and yearning there.

Another thing the movie put in sharp relief was how violently angry and passionate unbelievers can be in their unbelief. It was obvious they really cared about what they believed. Lee Strobel, while still an atheist, told his wife if she kept pursuing her new faith in Christ he didn’t see a future for them and would leave. By that point in the movie it was already clear he deeply loved his wife. He launched his country-spanning investigation to build a case to convince her God and Christ were just legends. Many nights he would drown his sorrows in drinking and became belligerent and bitter, staying up till wee hours of mornings to do research. His work suffered and he seemed to be coming apart all to fight belief in Christ. What about those of us who do believe? The fight for faith was obviously very real to him, but what about us? Do we show that same zeal and conviction about our faith in Christ?

This movie indirectly challenged me. Not to a more reasoned faith, which I already pursue, but a more impassioned one. One that respects the kind of love and thereby the kind of relationship God wants with us.

A Little History

 

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for Culturally-illiterate Science Reporters, Ancient Canaanite DNA Yields Occasion to Slap the Bible Around

I promise I’ll address the article I’ve linked to above in a moment, but first let me digress to talk about an incident from my time as an undergraduate in a sophomore history class.  The course was specifically Mediterranean history and included portions about the Israelites. During one of the lectures the professor made it a point to mention that archaeologists had uncovered artifacts that suggested the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom had referred to God as a Baal, thus suggesting they viewed Him as just another god amongst the other Canaanite gods. This then was used as a springboard to question the uniqueness of Israel’s religious history, their monotheistic heritage, and ultimately discredit the Bible as a reliable source of history and truth.

Here’s the real problem with the conclusions my sophomore peers were led to: the Bible explicitly addresses the issue already.  An incredible number of verses are devoted to speaking of how the Israelites did in fact treat God as just another god amongst many. Consider the account of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Why would Elijah have chastised the Northern Kingdom for vacillating between worship of God and Baal if they hadn’t been doing just that? Essentially what the archaeological findings showed was that the Bible was accurate in its portrayal of Iron Age Israel.

Now for this article. Much like the discovery of relics suggesting that ancient Israel once worshiped the Baals of neighboring people groups, a new finding about the genetics of Canaanites has produced a bizarre result in the media. News outlets seem to think the discovery that modern-day Lebanese people are genetically similar to Canaanites of the Bronze Age means the Bible was “wrong.” To summarize their point, they claim the Bible says God told the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites (which He did) and the Israelites completely annihilated them (which they didn’t). The key point here is the Bible actually, literally in unambiguous terms says the Israelites didn’t successfully remove the Canaanites from the land. So there’s really a huge convergence of evidence that the Bible was being perfectly open and honest about Israel’s failures and it has material and biological proof of its veracity.

Another critical position that denigrates the Bible’s authenticity really suffers for these discoveries as well. I find the hypotheses about multiple sources for the Torah coming together during the Babylonian exile stunning to consider, because essentially it would require the Israelites to fabricate centuries of their history while also accurately reflecting the socio-cultural and political changes within a region from almost a thousand years before their time with more accuracy than many modern era archaeologists have been able to theorize. Which begs the question: Why then do we continually look on the Bible with skepticism?

More Than We Realize

 

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One of my favorite lighter moments in the otherwise gritty movie The Dark Knight is when Lucius Fox lets accountant Coleman Reese into his office to discuss Mr. Reese’s financial findings, during which Reese implies Bruce Wayne is Batman and tries to blackmail Lucius.  The dialogue ended like this:

: [to Reese] Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?

[Reese’s face falls and Fox smiles]

: Good luck.

Of course Reese leaves rather pale and tight-lipped.  As he should.  His plan was pretty short-sighted. But, as naïve as he was, don’t we tend to do the same thing?  Don’t we inflate our sense of knowledge and position in our relationship with God?  It has often bothered me when I read discussions about whether the virgin birth or any of the miracles of the Bible could have actually happened.  Not so much from unbelievers, whom I would expect to be skeptical, but from Christians. There are no ends to the attempts to find naturalistic rationales for them and that is well and good, but I think we’re losing sight of something.  To borrow style from Mr. Lucius Fox:

“So, the God you’re debating about is the all-powerful Creator of the universe Who spoke into existence everything-enough atoms to form billions of galaxies; gravity, magnetism, all known and unknown forces; and time itself.  He Whom even the angels that continuously give Him praise in His presence cannot look upon. And you wonder whether that God can cause a woman to give birth without the contribution of a man? Turn water to wine? Split the Red Sea? Destroy the earth with a flood and reshape it however He desires? Raise the dead?”

But it really isn’t just in issues that are common battlefields of apologetics.  It’s in our daily lives.  We doubt Him so often.  “Surely He can’t heal this disease”, “Surely I can’t speak up at work or I’d lose my job”, “Surely I can’t be expected to give to others in need-how will I make it?”

Our view of Who God is often limits Him to the dimensions of what we can understand, what we perceive as achievable. Which is little wonder.  We’re finite beings with inflated senses of who we are in the grand backdrop of existence.  But God is bigger, much bigger in every sense than we have the ability to reason out. Christ said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6, ESV)

As a closing note, I have to mention, later in The Dark Knight, Coleman Reese was going to tell Bruce Wayne’s secret in hopes of stopping the Joker’s attacks. This put Reese in immediate mortal danger from the Joker who was just having too much “fun” to stop.  Bruce Wayne ends up risking his life to save Reese.  There’s a pretty powerful metaphor in that as well.

Some Lessons Learned From My Little One (Part 3)

 

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It has been almost a week since my Father’s Day and feels like a good time to share one of the more humorously frustrating lessons I’ve gotten from my little guy.

My latest lesson from what has become a semi-regular ritual of late.  Our little toddler has decided that he knows more than we do.  As most kids his age do right about now, he’s experiencing an explosion of words and loves testing out new words he hears us using.  What I question the normalcy of is how he can be adamant at times that when he looks at his Matchbox Austin Mini-Cooper, he declares it is a van, regardless of my corrections that it is a car.  Never mind I taught him both words and presumably how to apply them.  We have minute or longer back-and-forth disagreements about the proper taxonomy of the little lime green vehicle.

He did the same thing to his mom with colors in the past.  For some reason, he decided that every shade of red was really pink. Even primary color, if it were used to make a dress no one would mistake it for something else, red. Again, our little learner determined he was the master and argued with his mom.  Thankfully this is starting to get better as we’ve been showing him better examples of distinctly pink things and distinctly red things, but it really underscores that he, at any given time, decides he knows more than the ones teaching him.

You can guess where this is going.  It’s really the underlying theme of all the previous lessons I suppose.  It’s the idea that we know more than God.

I know what is best for me. But I don’t.

I know what I want and need most.  But I don’t.

I know everything about this world I live in, what I’m facing and how to handle it, and everything in between. But I don’t.

It’s something I’m sure God will be working on in me till I leave the world to be with Him.  I wish it weren’t so, but I’m thankful that God is gracious and loving enough to take the time to teach me and work with me so that I turn out to be the person He would have me to be.  That He loves me as a Father a child, and that in all the little lessons I’m having with my son, He’s showing me more and more clearly Himself.

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.“

-Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV

 

Some Lessons Learned From My Little One (Part 2)

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LESSON #2:

My little guy is constantly teaching me things. On the eve before Father’s Day, we had a bit of a scuffle at bed time.  He usually is a very happy participant in getting on his pajamas and really looks forward to wearing Daniel Tiger, Batman, and other characters to bed.  But that night he was highly incensed that I was trying to take off his dirty play clothes in favor of the pajamas. After a brief battle, I got the shirt off and put his pajamas on him and he was happy again.  Happy enough to start bouncing like a wildman on his bed.

To me, I felt like that’s how I’ve viewed leaving this world for eternity with God.  Yes, I look forward to being with Him forever, but I always attach that proviso of “one day”. So I’m looking forward to a someday that in practicality I keep wanting to put off.  But that isn’t right.  The Apostle Paul wrote about being torn over whether he would rather be with God immediately or stay in the world longer to help the churches he was ministering to.  He knew it was better to be with the Lord, but that the churches needed him and that last factor kept him from pleading to escape to be with the Lord.  For my part, there are a lot of things I would like to do in the Lord’s name before leaving the world, but if I’m honest, there’s an element of fear there too.

Heaven is new.  It’s still largely a mystery in its finer details (because ultimately the only detail that matters is God is there and gives us unrestricted access to Him forever). Like my son, I cling to what I have now even though what waits is fresher and better and ultimately what I need.  And just like my son, I want to choose my own “bedtime” but God’s wisdom is as much greater than mine as the sum total of the universe is greater than the Earth.  Even more skewed than that really.

“…perfect love drives out fear…” (1 John 4:18) So God is working on me with this one.

 

Along the way through this series, feel free to share any lessons you’ve picked up from the little ones you’ve known.

Some Lessons Learned From My Little One

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Since Father’s Day is tomorrow, I thought it might be nice to share a couple things I’ve noticed so far as a dad that God used to speak some deeper messages to me.  Since He is the Heavenly Father, a lot of my son’s actions and attitudes (he’s a toddler) make me think about my relationship with God the Father.  So over the next couple of days I’ll be sharing some of those lessons, starting today.

LESSON #1:

Our little guy has recently developed a sweet tooth.  He had a taste of cake at his most recent birthday party and ever since, he’s been hooked to desserts of pretty much any variety.  We try to limit his sugar intake and swap a conventional cookie for something like Pepperidge Farms goldfish snacks.

Another thing our son has cultivated already is an intense love of cars and trucks—real and toy vehicles of all sorts. While at the store today, we went through the toy aisle and he found a couple inexpensive trucks he really wanted and we let him hang on to them till we could decide whether to give them as gifts later on or not. Towards the end of our time in the store we passed by some baked goods. My son immediately called out, “CAKE!” and reached from the buggy towards them and then to my wife and I imploringly.

We really didn’t want to get the small cupcakes he had his eyes on, but thought we should let him choose what he really wanted: trucks or cupcakes. I thought I was super-intuitive to my son’s thought patterns and that he would pick the trucks. They last longer, he already had other daily treat items at home, and he had lovingly held and played with the trucks from the moment he first had them in hand. I was wrong. He chose the cupcakes even though the factors going into the decision clearly weighted the trucks as the obvious choice.

At that moment, I was like, wow, he would probably trade me and his mom (or at least me) for a cupcake.  It wasn’t a serious observation, as I tend to be sarcastic, even in my inner thoughts, but that’s when God hit me with something. I feel like that is exactly how I treat God.

There are things in life I choose over Him. It can be what I do with my time instead of spending it seeking Him.  The things I spend money on. What I say in conversations.  Every time we substitute something for getting to a closer relationship with God, we’ve let an idol displace Him and they’re always the worse choice. At the time, we feel like the thing, whatever it is, is the most pressing need we have and I know I personally do an excellent job of rationalizing terrible decisions.

A big lesson my son has taught me is to be very careful about what I choose to place my affections on.  Because I should be “approving the things that are excellent.”(Philippians 1:10)

Along the way through this series, feel free to share any lessons you’ve picked up from the little ones you’ve known.

Speaking Up

[image error]Martin Scorsese’s film, Silence, about Jesuit missionaries in search of their mentor in 17th Century Japan came out in January is now on DVD. Two Portuguese priests sneak into Japan, where Christianity was outlawed at the time, to find their mentor who may have committed apostasy. Based on a novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō, the film is said to be an intense presentation of the sufferings Christians have gone through, and in endure in the present, for following Christ. This isn’t a review or endorsement for the movie or book, though I do plan at a later date to talk about both. What this is about, are some very meaningful thoughts that go along with the purpose behind the book and film.[image error]

Some time ago, I read an interview with Silence‘s executive producer Tyler Zacharia conducted by Eliza Thomas of the International Mission Board about the movie. Mr. Zacharia said something that resonated with me and was a huge factor for me writing the novel Destitutio Quod Remissio (DQR): “…our perceptions of the world are based on our experiences and the stories that we see, hear, and live. Our experience of suffering, of God, of morality—our whole worldview—can be shaped by stories. When we can walk in someone else’s shoes for a brief moment, whether through a film or a book, we can share in an experience, learn from it, and grow in our own worldview.”

Mr. Zacharia very succinctly put to words what was going through my mind as I wrote [image error]about Christian-in-secret Marcus Servius, who loses all his worldly possessions, his position as a Roman senator, and all those closest to him when the secret of his faith is betrayed. Like the movie Silence, my hope is readers will find in his sufferings and his continuous challenge over choosing to forgive his tormentors or succumbing to his desire for vengeance, an aria of hope. The realization God is with us in our darkest hours and may be using us in ways we never imagined. In DQR, the fate of Rome’s Christians was at stake and it takes some time for Marcus to realize it. Even after it, choosing to follow Colossians 3:13 (“…forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”) continued to be a struggle.

[image error]We often forget the heroes of the faith in the Bible like the Apostles, King David, Gideon, Moses, Abraham, and Noah all had to face the extraordinary challenges and circumstances they were in with the same sort of limited vision we have. They didn’t get to see in the midst of their ordeals the victory. They had to act on faith and allow God to work as He willed. Gideon had to be panicking inside as he watched 9,700 of the 10,000 soldiers he’d gathered walk home. God promised to give him victory with the 300 remaining, but any of us would still be apprehensive and pretty convinced the battle against the Midianites would work so much better with at least a couple thousand of those sent away along for the task. Abraham had to leave his home and travel to a land he’d never seen, trust he’d have a son at age 100, and be prepared to offer that son and heir (around whom all God’s promises to bless Abraham had been built). Noah had to build a MASSIVE boat to survive a flood brought on by the God EVERYONE around him had rejected utterly.[image error]

No Throwaways

[image error]So, I watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story recently. As a long-time fan of Star Wars, I have to begin by saying it was everything I wanted The Force Awakens to be. That I liked the movie at all came as a surprise, because for a long time I held a healthy level of skepticism about its value as a story. After all, the ultimate outcome of the movie has been known since 1977. I called it a “throw-away story.” As much as the movie helped dispel that notion, it was more so the realization that knowing the outcome of events doesn’t make the work leading to them any less important.

As a Christian, I believe God has already told us the end of all things. In fact, God’s predictive prowess is a hallmark of His incomparable nature: “I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done, saying: My plan will take place, and I will do all My will.” (Isaiah 46:10, HCSB)

In keeping with this, He revealed to the Apostle John His plan for the consummation [image error]of the millennia of work He had done in bringing mankind back into perfect relationship with Himself. For a brief glimpse, see Revelation 21 and 22 (some excerpts are on this page). So we already know how the story of mankind, the world, all of history ends. God wins and with Him all who acknowledge, seek, and submit to Him. Suffering over. Death at an end. Knowing the end, however, does not diminish every day between now and then. Our suffering, our struggles, our choices matter. Not just for ourselves, but for others.

When we surrender ourselves to God, and allow Him to work in and through us we play the role in God’s story for which we were designed. Jyn, Arno, K2, and the whole cast of Rogue One played a major role in Star Wars, even while being a small part. They only obtained the Death Star plans, whereas Luke, Han, and the other classic characters destroyed it. Likewise, though our part in the story is minuscule compared to Christ’s and we may only provide in our lifetime the groundwork for others to do great things, without the groundwork those things will never come to pass.

Perhaps, in part, my enjoyment of Rogue One is owing to a respect for the quiet, smaller scale heroes. Now I know, no story is a throwaway. Least of all the one God is composing in your life and mine.

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“The King Has Returned”

 

[image error]Today I got to watch a favorite movie from my childhood with my little boy, The Lion King.  In interest of full disclosure, he’s still a little young for it and ended up playing a lot and occasionally looking up at it.  I was glued to it though.  There’s something stirring about some of those scenes in the movie, like the one I picked at left.  Simba, the long-lost king returning to claim his birthright.  Sound familiar?

It’s amazing how many stories in cultures all around the world feature a long-awaited or lost or forgotten king returning to the throne that belongs to him and setting right the wrongs in the kingdom.  Admittedly I’m most familiar with western examples of the pattern: King Arthur claiming the sword in the stone, Aragorn in Lord of the Rings being crowned King of Gondor, and even Odysseus returning from his long voyage to rescue Ithaca.  Why do we obsess with this idea of a longed after king?  The one who rightfully rules returning?

[image error]Aragorn as King of Gondor in movie adaptation of The Return of the King.

Some of you may have guessed where I’m going with this.  As you may know, tomorrow is Palm Sunday.  The day Christians remember Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, fulfilling the prophecy of the Hebrew scripture recorded several centuries before by the prophet Zechariah.  “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)  It’s really one of the most interesting confluences of prophetic fulfillment and is worth studying on its own (particularly Daniel 9:24-27), but I’ll try to stick to my point, which is more general.  On that day nearly two thousand years ago, the hearts of Jerusalem’s expectant throngs were stirred with the arrival of the King of Kings.  Their long awaited Messiah, Who would deliver them and right all the wrongs of the Jewish state.  Of course, history bears record alongside Scripture that the Lord Jesus was not long welcomed in such manner, and was crucified with the crowds that had cheered him shouting jeers instead.  He had not come to be the sort of king they wanted.

 

[image error]Image of the legend of King Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone.

There’s something so powerful about the moment in any story when that rightful ruler steps forward and pronounces his claim to the throne.  It’s always portrayed like the booming thunder of a storm and stands the hairs of our arms on end.  “The King has returned…”  I would submit to you, that perhaps our hearts are thrilled at this, because deep within, they feel that longing for the world we live in.  Broken and a source of continual grief, this world is not as it should be and we understand that.  We all long for something better, something more.  For a different ruler to step up and set right the world.  What Christians celebrate at Easter is, when the tomb was opened and Jesus Christ stepped forth, the King had returned.  “‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’  ‘O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?’” (1 Corinthians 15:54b-55)  Though most of the Jewish people didn’t recognize it then, and many fail to see it now, the Lord Jesus stood forth on the morning of His resurrection having dethroned death and renounced Satan’s claim on this world.  Since that day, He has come and for every welcoming heart, liberated His people, drawing them to His side in preparation for the day when coming in the clouds He splits the sky and sets right all.

Like Simba in The Lion King, who was thought to be dead, Christ is alive and that is indescribable.  It’s everything we long for.  Our King is working among His subjects and one day He will stand in the final victory and every hope of the ages, every story of the triumphal returned king, will have fulfillment.  Little wonder we get chill bumps when we consider, “The King has returned…”