The Biblical Narrative Part 8 of 10
Proverbs 3:5-6 takes on a new significance in our modern world…if God is shown to actualize the same high-quality of precision in composing, initiating, and managing life-script callings modeled for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…steeped in purpose and meaning…as He exhibits in the complex, specified, and precisely coordinated systems of information that science has recently uncovered in the living and non-living natural world.
The light that human scientific investigation now shines on the coordination of complex systems of information in the natural world…very similar to our own pursuit of perfect, error-free creations such as computer software language code for word-processing and spreadsheet applications…and space shuttle missions that return safely to earth…this recognition of the required intelligence component within complex systems of information…lifts our appreciation of the natural world up and out of the lower level of the now archaic, mindless and unguided naturalistic explanations for the workings of the natural world…up into the more plausible and rational explanation of the agency of an Intelligent Designer…even when His precise creative methods (Gen. 1:3) appear at this time to not be amenable to human scientific investigation.
The sheer brilliance of the introduction, arrangement, and sequence of the information needed to select the right number and types of chemicals in the right quantities…to carefully mix these in the right sequential order for the correct time-periods and at the right temperatures…to produce the actual origin of life in the complete and functional form of living, replicating cells of the highest complexity and integration of parts…can no longer be plausibly attributed to occur through the purely naturalistic means of accidentally lucky, undirected chance.
If we then extend the recognition of this same intellectual and artistic brilliance over to the composition of the biblical narrative stories of faith…we discover a perfect fit with the truth, reliability, and application of the Bible to modern life…that was always there in timeless relevance in the scriptures…that in my opinion now even exceeds the magnitude of Martin Luther’s discovery in scripture that “the just shall live by faith”…that propelled the start of the culturally monumental and theologically liberating Protestant Reformation.
Hard-core biblical skeptics incorrectly want Jesus Christ…on Tuesday or Wednesday of the first week following His resurrection on Easter morning…to walk openly down the middle of Main Street in broad daylight and straight into the Temple in Jerusalem…thus initiating a widespread, empirically undeniable proof for His claim to be the Son of God…on the same level that we popularly recognize that two-plus-two equals four…or that the nonday sun exists.
The fundamental shortcoming of this insistence by skeptics of the Bible…is that it creates no context…no milieu…no environment of life events and circumstances to create a personal relationship between God and people…within the mere factual consensus that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead.
It would substitute the wrong type of empirical facts in place of the correct type of empirical facts…the correct type being discovered through the lived experience of a journey of faith…rather than a fleeting assent to a visual observation…then going about our lives as before.
It removes the critical element of tension…of suspense over time regarding future outcomes…from our life-stories…that creates the context for faith to actualize into the mature, intimate, personal relationship of trust between God and people…the same as occurs in human relationships.
There is also no moral component…no merit…to acknowledging the existence of the noonday sun…or the truth that two-plus-two equals four…and not three or five…other than the correlation to the truth of the accuracy of our information.
Acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the Son of God through empirical, observational fact…has no change-of-character impact upon the worldly conventional narrative…has no course-correction in our decision to go our own way…as autonomous, self-reliant junior gods…sitting atop the thrones of our lives.
Seeing the resurrected Jesus walking openly down Main Street in Jerusalem…visually with our eyes…does not change our resolve to live our lives our way without “interference” from God…any more than seeing Jesus raise Lazarus to life after being four days dead in a rock covered tomb…changed the thinking of the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers…and a few days later in that same week…thoroughly and with finality rejecting Jesus…cruelling mocking Him as He hung dying on the cross (Mt. 27:39-44).
The decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives…to choose to follow Him…is a moral choice involving faith…at the center of personal relationships.
A personal relationship has the elements of mutual faith and trust…and this is where the modern recognition and elevated appreciation of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…revolutionizes our understanding of purpose and meaning for today’s Christians…and for sharing the gospel message to non-Christians.
It isn’t merely that the just shall live by faith…thereby clarifying and removing the injurious toxicity of the false doctrine of self-salvation…through the human invented performance of the good-works of indulgences, venerating relics, and making pilgrimages to holy sites…for the sole purpose of raising money for the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1500’s…exposed by Martin Luther at the risk to his life…at the start of the Protestant Reformation around 1520 A.D.
Many Christians today correctly preach and teach that God has a plan for our lives…which is straight down the middle of true, orthodox Christian doctrine.
But this does not mean that Christians can also at the same time…in ignorance follow the worldly conventional model of going our own way…as if God will somehow automatically insert and blend-in His higher ways and thoughts along an intersecting and overlapping dual track…of His higher ways diluted and compromised within our lower worldly desires and plans…silently inserted without our knowledge or without first obtaining our tacit acceptance.
God tells Abraham…upfront…in advance…the promise that in Canaan…God will make Abraham the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…as beyond count as the dust of the earth (Gen. 12: 1-2, 13:16-17, 15:5)…something that Abraham could not orchestrate through self-effort.
This is the displacement element expressed in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that from a scientific viewpoint as determined and prolific students of the natural world…now recognizing empirically the precision of its intelligent designer as being eminently better qualified to craft this universe than we are…as also being better qualified to compose our life-scripts than we are.
In the true biblical narrative worldview…for genuine forward progress to be made…for real function to actualize…God needs to replace our ways with His higher ways.
This is the “straight-up”…undiluted pure truth…that sets apart the biblical narrative in a modern world.
Abraham therefore…in his specific case…has a clear, definitive calling…which he responds to through faith and trust in God…unlike the storylines for Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Elizabeth Bennett and Mister Darcy…to name a few modern characters of fiction…who rely upon worldly conventional methods to resolve their predicaments.
Luke Skywalker in Star Wars uses “the force” to combat evil…but this is a rendition of pantheism…which has been eliminated as a viably serious worldview by the discovery of the Big Bang creation of the universe at a definite point in time 13.7 billion years ago.
The light that human scientific investigation now shines on the coordination of complex systems of information in the natural world…very similar to our own pursuit of perfect, error-free creations such as computer software language code for word-processing and spreadsheet applications…and space shuttle missions that return safely to earth…this recognition of the required intelligence component within complex systems of information…lifts our appreciation of the natural world up and out of the lower level of the now archaic, mindless and unguided naturalistic explanations for the workings of the natural world…up into the more plausible and rational explanation of the agency of an Intelligent Designer…even when His precise creative methods (Gen. 1:3) appear at this time to not be amenable to human scientific investigation.
The sheer brilliance of the introduction, arrangement, and sequence of the information needed to select the right number and types of chemicals in the right quantities…to carefully mix these in the right sequential order for the correct time-periods and at the right temperatures…to produce the actual origin of life in the complete and functional form of living, replicating cells of the highest complexity and integration of parts…can no longer be plausibly attributed to occur through the purely naturalistic means of accidentally lucky, undirected chance.
If we then extend the recognition of this same intellectual and artistic brilliance over to the composition of the biblical narrative stories of faith…we discover a perfect fit with the truth, reliability, and application of the Bible to modern life…that was always there in timeless relevance in the scriptures…that in my opinion now even exceeds the magnitude of Martin Luther’s discovery in scripture that “the just shall live by faith”…that propelled the start of the culturally monumental and theologically liberating Protestant Reformation.
Hard-core biblical skeptics incorrectly want Jesus Christ…on Tuesday or Wednesday of the first week following His resurrection on Easter morning…to walk openly down the middle of Main Street in broad daylight and straight into the Temple in Jerusalem…thus initiating a widespread, empirically undeniable proof for His claim to be the Son of God…on the same level that we popularly recognize that two-plus-two equals four…or that the nonday sun exists.
The fundamental shortcoming of this insistence by skeptics of the Bible…is that it creates no context…no milieu…no environment of life events and circumstances to create a personal relationship between God and people…within the mere factual consensus that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead.
It would substitute the wrong type of empirical facts in place of the correct type of empirical facts…the correct type being discovered through the lived experience of a journey of faith…rather than a fleeting assent to a visual observation…then going about our lives as before.
It removes the critical element of tension…of suspense over time regarding future outcomes…from our life-stories…that creates the context for faith to actualize into the mature, intimate, personal relationship of trust between God and people…the same as occurs in human relationships.
There is also no moral component…no merit…to acknowledging the existence of the noonday sun…or the truth that two-plus-two equals four…and not three or five…other than the correlation to the truth of the accuracy of our information.
Acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the Son of God through empirical, observational fact…has no change-of-character impact upon the worldly conventional narrative…has no course-correction in our decision to go our own way…as autonomous, self-reliant junior gods…sitting atop the thrones of our lives.
Seeing the resurrected Jesus walking openly down Main Street in Jerusalem…visually with our eyes…does not change our resolve to live our lives our way without “interference” from God…any more than seeing Jesus raise Lazarus to life after being four days dead in a rock covered tomb…changed the thinking of the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers…and a few days later in that same week…thoroughly and with finality rejecting Jesus…cruelling mocking Him as He hung dying on the cross (Mt. 27:39-44).
The decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives…to choose to follow Him…is a moral choice involving faith…at the center of personal relationships.
A personal relationship has the elements of mutual faith and trust…and this is where the modern recognition and elevated appreciation of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…revolutionizes our understanding of purpose and meaning for today’s Christians…and for sharing the gospel message to non-Christians.
It isn’t merely that the just shall live by faith…thereby clarifying and removing the injurious toxicity of the false doctrine of self-salvation…through the human invented performance of the good-works of indulgences, venerating relics, and making pilgrimages to holy sites…for the sole purpose of raising money for the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1500’s…exposed by Martin Luther at the risk to his life…at the start of the Protestant Reformation around 1520 A.D.
Many Christians today correctly preach and teach that God has a plan for our lives…which is straight down the middle of true, orthodox Christian doctrine.
But this does not mean that Christians can also at the same time…in ignorance follow the worldly conventional model of going our own way…as if God will somehow automatically insert and blend-in His higher ways and thoughts along an intersecting and overlapping dual track…of His higher ways diluted and compromised within our lower worldly desires and plans…silently inserted without our knowledge or without first obtaining our tacit acceptance.
God tells Abraham…upfront…in advance…the promise that in Canaan…God will make Abraham the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky…as beyond count as the dust of the earth (Gen. 12: 1-2, 13:16-17, 15:5)…something that Abraham could not orchestrate through self-effort.
This is the displacement element expressed in the biblical narrative stories of faith…that from a scientific viewpoint as determined and prolific students of the natural world…now recognizing empirically the precision of its intelligent designer as being eminently better qualified to craft this universe than we are…as also being better qualified to compose our life-scripts than we are.
In the true biblical narrative worldview…for genuine forward progress to be made…for real function to actualize…God needs to replace our ways with His higher ways.
This is the “straight-up”…undiluted pure truth…that sets apart the biblical narrative in a modern world.
Abraham therefore…in his specific case…has a clear, definitive calling…which he responds to through faith and trust in God…unlike the storylines for Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Elizabeth Bennett and Mister Darcy…to name a few modern characters of fiction…who rely upon worldly conventional methods to resolve their predicaments.
Luke Skywalker in Star Wars uses “the force” to combat evil…but this is a rendition of pantheism…which has been eliminated as a viably serious worldview by the discovery of the Big Bang creation of the universe at a definite point in time 13.7 billion years ago.
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