Author: Ben Taylor

He will never see death

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. – John 8:51

Matt Chandler believes this means that, at the moment right as our souls leave our bodies, they are scooped up, as if by an angel, to paradise. We don’t truly “see” or “taste” death, in the sense that the tearing apart of soul and body comes thus gracefully and gently to the believer. Our eternal life continues uninterrupted. I agree with this – I can see the beauty in the angels eagerly gathering the saint at the very first instant they can. Worth some further thought.

Now that you say “we see”

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. – John 9:39-41

This is a cryptic passage that I’ve always kind of skipped over. “Ah, there’s Jesus being confusing again…I’ll wrestle with it later…” John Piper, to his credit, rolls up his sleeves and gives treatment to these difficult statements by Jesus. His sermon is here: For Judgment I Came Into This World

Here’s my paraphrase of the scripture, based on Piper’s breakdown:

“If you were blind, with the kind of real obliviousness that would exonerate you from responsibility, then yes, you would have no guilt. But you are not that kind of blind—you are blind, but you say that you see. Your blindness is of the sort that claims not to be blind. It’s a kind of willful ignorance, a rebellious avoidance of the light that you know. That kind of blindness does not diminish your guilt. It is your guilt.”

This is like the atheist who says there is no God and yet hates God and is opposed to the idea of him. What is he angry at? You cannot be angry at no one, you cannot hold a grudge against something which you genuinely believe doesn’t exist. The atheist knows in the back of his mind that God is there, but he plugs his ears and says “Nananana!” and chooses to make himself ignorant of God’s existence, because he doesn’t want God to exist. We believe what we want to believe.

The misfortune of this is that he can be rather effective in convincing himself that God does not exist, and after a while his heart will crust over and he will forget that he knows God exists, that is, until someone mentions God or some circumstance forces him back to the issue.

There is another danger, for me and other churchfolk, who think that by learning doctrine and morality and upstanding behavior, we are able to see. The gospel is for those who know we can’t see. “If you say you have no sin, your sin remains…” (1 John 1:8). It’s ironic. Everything is upside down in the Kingdom of God. Those who feel like they have it figured out, don’t. Those who know they don’t have it figured out, have thereby figured it out.

“I am the wisest person in the world, because I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates

What is a person?

At the Jireh coffeehouse last night, a cluster of us Christians got into some meaty speculation on the nature of man and what it means to be a person. We postulated that having a soul was comprised of the mind, will, emotions, and that a soul was a necessary, defining characteristic of being a person. “The soul is the seat of the identity,” someone suggested. However, this got us into a pickle.

Are thinking, feeling and choosing necessary functions of personhood? Can you be a person without them?

If one is a person only to the extent that he possesses a soul, i.e. the functions of mind, will and emotion, then our idea of personhood is narrowed. For example, is a human who doesn’t have a sentient mind (braindead patient, severe paranoid schizophrenic, or prenatal infant) still a person? An evangelical has to say, “Yes, he is still a person,” otherwise we would have to radically modify our stance on abortion, euthanasia, and “the sanctity of human life” generally.

So maybe it is possible to be a person and not have a soul (as we have defined it). On what basis do we define personhood, then? Well, we can go with the materialists and say that we are simply bodies, that supernatural concepts are simply smoke from the fire of the high-level survival instincts running in our frontal lobe. But if we believe there’s more to me than matter, where does that leave us?

We have to conclude that there is a distinctive element of the self that is not comprised of the mind, will, emotions, or body. It transcends these and exists even when they cease. That’s why Christians believe in the “sanctity of human life” and claim that every person is created in the image of God. The typical name for this isspirit. It’s been said that a person “is a spirit that has a soul and lives in a body.” That’s the trichotomist (3-Part) view of man.

What this means is there is more to my identity than my self-awareness. There is an essence of me that is created, sustained, and destined by God, which my thinking, feeling and choosing do not cause. If I were the ultimate determiner of my reality and my fate, then my soul (mind, will, emotions) would be the apex of my identity. But what if God is the ultimate determiner of who I am and who I become? God is not only sovereign over my circumstances, he is sovereign over my essence.

So, by discovery of the existence of a human “spirit,” we again encounter the supreme domain of God, and we face the age-old decision, whether we will rejoice in his rule or resent him for it.

Jephthah

Wayne Barber at New Camp 2011 pointed out that the judge Jephthah is in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith.” However, besides going to war against the Canaanites, he’s chiefly known for making a rash vow that causes him to presumably kill his daughter as an offering to God (for his story read Judges chapter 11). Bummer.

Yet somehow he makes it into the list of people we should emulate. It’s not really whether child sacrifice is good that’s worth discussing, but why he’s in the list. I agree with Wayne that it points out a striking point:

Our mistakes do not cancel our ability to be used by God. God uses people with faith and failure mixed together – if he required a clean record, only Daniel, Joseph and Jesus would be our role models. Most of the rest of the Biblical figures are mentioned as having flaws – often some major ones. (Cf. Peter and the Disciples, Paul, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah etc.)

Praise God that I can still make an impact and be used by God in mighty ways, even if I feel like I’m worthy of being shelved for the rest of my days, consigned to mopping floors like John Newton in Amazing Grace.

A goat and a hole

One time, two children were walking in a forest when they came across a hole in the ground. The hole was very large and deep, and all they saw was blackness below. “Look how deep this is!” said one of the children, “I bet this hole has no bottom. I bet it goes all the way through to China!”

“That’s nonsense!” said the other.

So the first boy took a rock and threw it down the hole. It didn’t make a sound.

“You see!” the first boy said. “No bottom!” But the second boy still didn’t believe him. So he picked up a very big rock and thew it down the hole. “Still no sound!” said the first boy triumphantly.

“I still don’t believe it,” said the second boy. “It’s got to have a bottom.” So the first boy looked around and saw an old railroad tie lying on the ground. “Here,” he said, “give me a hand with this.”

The two boys dragged the heavy piece of metal over to the hole and dumped it in. Still no sound.

“See, I told you so!” said the first boy.

Just then, a goat came running past them, faster than they had ever seen a goat run. It went sprinting right up to the hole and then jumped in, falling down into the darkness.

“Did you see that!” exclaimed the children, “That goat just committed suicide in that hole!”

Just then, a farmer came up along a nearby path in a rusty farm truck.

“Hey, Mister, have you ever seen this hole?” they called to him. He got out of the car and came over. “No, I’ve never seen this hole in my life,” he said.

“Well, we just saw a goat run up and commit suicide by jumping into this hole.” said the boys. “Would that happen to be your goat?”

The farmer replied, “No, that couldn’t have been mine. My goat is tied to a railroad tie.”

Be careful what you’re attached to.

I am too easily pleased

An excerpt from
The Weight of Glory
by C.S. Lewis
Preached originally as a sermon in the
Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford,
on June 8, 1942: published in
THEOLOGY, November, 1941,
and by the S.P.C.K, 1942
_____________________________

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Read the rest here

Love like battle armor

Here’s a wake-up call for me: I’m a humble grad student, but having kids is less than a decade away. In
In the car with my brother last week, I tried to argue why it would be okay to put my kids through public school, you know, do things the “normal way.” We didn’t reach a clean conclusion, and I’m not saying public schools are good or bad. But by the end of the conversation, I admit my bro had me convinced of one thing: I have to ensure that my children are influenced by Christians (including their parents) more than non-Christian friends, teachers, and role models. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but it’s my responsibility to find out.

I want to redefine “sheltered.” The former generation often protected the upbringing of their children by cloistering them in Christian schools, churches, etc. I say the new generation can (and even should) be “in the world,” operating as salt and light in normal secular contexts. However, it’s simple fact: you become like those you spend time with and those you look up to. My kids will become like those who give them the most time, attention, and affirmation. If I’m not proactive about it, his friend Greg and the science teacher Mr. Kim will shape him the most.

I’m not a fan of being “sheltered,” at least in the way often associated with homeschoolers (you know, bare-footed spelling-bee champions who are downright weird). I suggest a new concept of “shelter” – not a cloister from culture, but bands of relationship that surround you. I want to give my children something more like battle armor than a fortress. Friends from church, a loving family, mentors and teachers, all who share in our beliefs. “Beliefs are based on relationships” (Josh McDowell). Wrapped in those caring relationships, like chain mail, my children will be better armed to withstand worldly influences.

We must be the primary influences on our children. Pre-school and day-care and babysitters and summer camps and “go-play-with-your-friends” won’t cut it these days. The challenge lies before us, and we must rise to meet it: we must be committed to love our children in the face of a hypercommitted society where sitting down for a family meal is a big event.

I’ve got to invest the time necessary to influence my children’s upbringing, to find out how to successfully “raise up my children in the way they should go” in a postmodern melting pot.

So to me and my young adult friends who are going to be parents sooner that we think: do we know what we believe, and what we want our children to believe? Are we ready? The next generation will soon be upon us.

The law in one commandment

For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek Me [inquire for and of Me and require Me as you require food] and you shall live!
Amos 5:4 (Amplified)

Seek God.

William H. Saulez, in The Romance of the Hebrew Language, says that this is the simplification of the Law into a single commandment. Beautifully unified, the command echoes inside my soul. Like it did in David’s.

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”
Psalm 27:8 (ESV)

A rotten trick…and how to really enjoy pleasure

Satan plays a rotten trick on us when it comes to the lust of the flesh. The pleasure looks so tantalizing, so relieving, so good from a distance. The climax of elation is actually in the approach, the prelude. Even as I am taking the first bite of that fruit, the pleasure diminishes. By the time I’ve swallowed, the pleasure has vanished and regret overtakes me suddenly. (Can I get a witness?) At least to me, pleasure is inversely proportional to proximity.

The beauty of pleasure that we receive while we are rightly related to Christ is that, when the rush is over, he is right there in front of us, smiling. (Maybe asking us, “How’d you like it?”) There is no void, because the Source of the pleasure is with us, and he will never leave us or forsake us. The constancy of God’s love redeems the rush of pleasure, and we can look back on it the next day and say, “That was a good thing.” It will not have vanished. Praise be to God for the times he’s given me this far superior joy!

It’s like two men going out to a bar to drink, one because he’s alone and lonely, the other with friends to have a relaxing evening with them. The first is drinking to try and meet the need, the other is drinking because the need is met. When we are experiencing them with Jesus, pleasures become truly pleasant.