Author: Ben Taylor

Good schemes

“Happy is he who is gracious to the poor,” says the Word. “He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker, but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him.” So we should be gracious to the poor, clearly.

But it also says, “Will they not go astray who devise evil? But kindness and truth will be to those who devise good.” Devise good! Am I a schemer for good, concocting covert operations to carry it out? Scheme it out, concoct a battle plan to enact it…I ought not only to do good when it hits me in the face, I ought also to prepare to help the poor, to plan on coming to their aid, to make provision for it. If we make provision for the flesh and then fall into sin, why not make provision for good deeds?

Beyond even that, the scripture says nearby, “In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” So we are forced, if we talk so, to be men of action, not of word only but in deed and in truth.

The Absolute Deity of Christ

A personal statement of doctrine, in response to a conversation with Mormons:

There is One God, and Jesus Christ is He. He was not created, but has always been the Eternal God. He is absolutely God; this is necessary for the perfection of His sacrifice, and thus for our salvation. He only is God; His nature as such can never be shared by any other being.

Now to defend it by scripture…

There Is One God.
The scriptures say:

  • “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and His Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me. Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it’” (Isaiah 44: 6-7a).
  • And again, “I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God” (Isaiah 44).
  • “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
  • As it says, “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8).

    Therefore there is one God in heaven, and God does not share His glory. Therefore if Christ shares in God’s glory (which he does according to John 17), and if he is deity, then He is included in this one God, and cannot be a separately identified being.

    I have heard that Mormons say these scriptures, and all the Old Testament references to God, are the revelation of Christ, that is, Jesus Christ is called “LORD” (YHWH) and “God,” and it is He who is speaking here. If that were the case, it does not help at all, since Christ would then be excluding the Father from Godhood and claiming all of it for himself. So there remains a single God according to scripture.

    Christ is God.
    For this is how Jacob had the dream at Bethel, in which he saw the Lord standing in the clouds above the ladder, in heavenly glory (Genesis 28:13), and at Peniel he wrestled with God in the form of a man, and said “I have seen God face to face” (Genesis 32:30).
    Furthermore Paul writes, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9).

    The Lord Christ said, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I AM,” (John 8:58) making himself out to be the same as God on High, the Eternal One, so clearly that the Pharisees were enraged as his “blasphemy” and picked up stones to kill him.

    And later in John 14:8-9: “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?’”
    So if anyone who has seen Christ has seen the fullness of God the Father, how can you say they are one in purpose only? If I go as an ambassador to the U.N., unswervingly intent on the same goals as the president, even then, can I say that he who has seen me has seen the president? No, I can never assert myself to be the true president unless I am he.

    If Christ is God at all, He must be one in essence, nature, and substance with the Father to the point of being this One God, because God is one. Therefore Jesus is not one with the Father in purpose alone, but as the very same Being!

    Christ was not created.
    Presupposition: Christ is either created or he was not created.
    Presupposition: The only thing that is not created is God, the Creator.

    The scriptures say, “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6). John also testifies, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3).

    But how can He be created through whom came all things? Can the blacksmith’s hammer pouind itself into shape on the anvil? So if it was through Christ that the world was made, he cannot be a part of the world. Therefore he must be God, since the only thing that is not created is God.
    Godhood is eternal.

    The Father does not change. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). Elsewhere God is referenced: “…With Whom there is no change” (Psalm 55:19). Therefore he cannot have added to himself or subtracted from himself at any point. He is wholly who he is and ever was and ever will be. Therefore, if Jesus Christ is God, sharing in his nature, neither does he change, since God does not. If Christ is co-equal with the Father, truly deity, then he must have always been so, and necessarily will always be so.

    But Jesus is more accurately “like” God, you might say. If Jesus Christ is like God, we must define how exactly he is like God – in which attributes? There are many absolute attributes of God for which there is a stark “yes” or “no.” For example, if he is holy, he must be fully so, there is no “partially holy.” Does he therefore share in God’s (1) omnipotence, (2) omniscience, (3) omnipresence, (4) eternality, (5) perfection, and (6) pure agape love? If Jesus does not share in these attributes, I ask how he really shares in the nature of the Father at all? He seems less than God – a very great angel, perhaps, but not deity worthy of worship, while there is Another who does in fact possess such attributes. If Jesus does share in these attributes with God, then I ask how he could have ever not done so? For how could the Father, at that point lacking that which is eternal, perfect, and all-powerful (Christ), at the same time be perfect and complete? So you see we have taken a roundabout way to the same conclusion: that to be really like God is necessarily an eternal status, not something that can be gained or lost. Therefore If Christ is God, he has eternally been God, since Godhood is eternal.

    Without complete Godhood Christ’s sacrifice is insufficient.
    There is none righteous but God alone (Isaiah 59). “They will say of me, ‘In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.’” (Isaiah 45:24). “For you alone are holy” (Revelation 15:4). God requires a spotless lamb as a sacrifice for sin. So the only one who is spotless enough to ultimately appease God on our behalf is a 100% sinless sacrifice. The 100% sinless sacrifice must be 100% godly. And no one is 100% godly save God Himself. If Christ were less than entirely God, he would be made in the smallest bit of incompletely sinless stuff. And that one tiny fraction of imperfection in that one tiny part of him would render him completely imperfect, because perfection is pure; it is “yes” or “no,” not “mostly.” So if only God is perfect, then to be the perfect, spotless lamb requires that you be fully made of God. Therefore Christ must have had complete, unadulterated godhood if his sacrifice was to cover over the sins of all humanity.
    To believe Jesus was less than God is to believe he is a sign on the way to God, not the way itself. If Jesus is God Himself, and only then, he is able to connect you from the earth to heaven, having a foot secure in both places by the glory of his hypostatic union.

    Christ holds a unique role of sonship to God unlike any other man.
    Christ To be saved you must believe in the “only begotten son” of God (John 3:16)– begotten, not created. For “begotten” means to be born of, to issue forth from, be one in essence with. It means that Jesus was the only one of God’s children that was his child in this special way. All mankind is children of God as created children, but God did not beget any man of His essence like He begot Jesus. Therefore no man can reach the level of sonship and Godhood that Christ possesses.

    No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.     – John 1:18

Responses to crisis

I have a textbook for COMS 360 entitled Business and Professional Communication (DiSanza and Legge). The textbook defines an organizational crisis as “a major, unpredictable event that has potentially negative results. The event and its aftermath may significantly damage an organization and its employees, products, services, financial condition, and reputation.” The chapter also defines crisis communication as “what the organization says to its employees, the media, the community, customers, suppliers, stockholders, and creditors during and after the crisis.”

There are five options an organization has when responding to an organizational crisis, according to DiSanza and Legge. They are:
1. Denial. “It didn’t happen.”
2. Evading responsibility. “We were forced to do it because of them.”
3. Reducing offensiveness. “It’s not a big deal.”
4. Corrective action. “We’ve paid back in full those affected and taken measures to prevent it in the future.”
5. Mortification. “We did wrong, and we apologize.” (The “most extreme” communication response”)

These are the ways I may respond when the crisis of my sin hits me. My heart takes one of those postures when I do “crisis communication” with myself and God.

1. I will simply deny that I have sinned
2. I will evade responsibility for the sin, deflecting it to something in my environment (“The woman you gave me…”)
3. I will try to downplay the sin (“Look at those guys. They’re the real people with the issues.”)
4. I will take corrective action. (Penitential actions.)
5. I will confess to God that I have sinned, accept responsibility and culpability, and beg his forgiveness. Mortification is an appropriate word for this, because it’s root means the process of rendering something dead.

Where I land on this scale of response corresponds to how bad I perceive the crisis to be. It is clear that those who perceive the mortal danger of their sin respond with mortification and accompanying corrective actions, whereas those who do not consider their sin to be a crisis respond in the other ways (possibly including some corrective actions).

Sin renders natural man in mortal danger. May God engender in us the awareness of our sin and the power to respond with the proper mortification of soul.

Jesus as the disgraced enemy of God

 

And when they brought those kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the men of Israel and said to the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with him, “Come near; put your feet on the necks of these kings.” Then they came near and put their feet on their necks. 25 And Joshua said to them, “Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous.For thus the Lord will do to all your enemies against whom you fight.”26 And afterward Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening.27 But at the time of the going down of the sun, Joshua commanded, andthey took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves, and they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day. (Joshua 10:24-27)

Jesus took the role of the conquered enemy king when he went to the cross. Israel put his foot on the neck of Christ and dishonored him publicly, then hung on a tree until night (and cursed is he who hangs on a tree [Deuteronomy 21:23]), and then put him in a cave and sealed the door. God caused all of this to happen, and in so doing he painfully withheld his hand from intervening to save the honor of his Only Begotten. As the Cornerstone was rejected and called enemy, God bit his tongue and did not react to the injustice.

In fact, in some sense, God was the one who did all this to his son. “For thus the Lord will do to all your enemies,” Joshua said. God treated his own son with the disgrace of the defeated enemy. Why did he do this? Because if it wasn’t Jesus, it would have been us. We would have been put into that cave. But like the kings at Makkedah we wouldn’t have had the strength to come out of the cave, and we would have remained in exile and imprisonment “to this very day.” But Christ, when he was buried, rose on the third day in the power of God. Praise be to Him, who has become the enemy of the Father so that we could become his friend!

I am John the Baptist

  • I am a witness, a man (a tiny mortal) sent from God (divinely raised up), of great importance and great unimportance. I am necessary and I am insignificant.
  • I do not deny that I am not the Christ. I am not the Christ…I am not the prophet…I am not the focal point. I’m not the bridegroom, I am just the friend who brought the bride and him together. When Christ and those around me go in together, and I’m out on the porch, my joy is full.
  • My death need not be recorded – I’m okay with fading to the back and just disappearing. I will not begrudge all attention turning to Christ. This is the thing people will hear from me, my final words: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life: but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
  • I am a witness who does not need to get attention to himself. (Even to his flaws.) In my witness I must not make much of myself. When I plant seeds and when I water them, I am not anything. I preach Jesus Christ as lord and not myself. He must increase, but I must decrease.
  • My witness is necessary, but it is merely a voice. Not an end. It’s content points to another. I am crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of another.”
  • I bear witness to the Light. I say, “Behold the son of God.” (How do you wear witness to a light? You say, “Behold! Look at it!”)
  • In the middle of this divine story, there is a witness, a mere mortal man, who is written in, but he has “parenthesis” around him.

Unity metaphors from Psalm 133

When we live in unity it is the mark that we are set apart to God, like the fragrant oil that set apart the sons of Aaron. The oil is a spice-scented, expensive commodity, loaded with eternal significance and symbolic meaning. “Wow – unity!” When we live in unity, it is so pleasant, a treasure, a rare delicacy, a precious gift, like the pleasure we get from the finest wine when we have saved for the special occasion. It is the finest delicacy of God that he gives us to enjoy, with the exquisite and inimitable aftertaste of the joy of heaven.

It is God’s blessing flowing down on us, the manifestation that shows we are His. The unity we have is the mark that we are different than everybody else, that we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are set apart because God has chosen us and we follow him; we are also set apart because we stand together, as a unit, a separate group. To be set apart from the world means to be set together with each other. We have taken the same vow; swearing allegiance to the Commander, we have sworn allegiance to each of His servants. Priesthoods and nations are corporate identities! If you are “one of us” you belong to God. Our priesthood is a brotherhood, an elite fraternity whose loyalty to our leader and loyalty to each other are indivisible – it is one spirit that stirs within us both loyalties.

Therefore let us cultivate our esprit de corps in the name of Christ, even as we cultivate our private devotion to Him, for they are one and the same. Let us cultivated the “spirit of the body,” building camaraderie and corporate identity, so that the head of the body might be exalted. How can priests minister before the altar unless they are in harmony? But their harmony of spirit (in accordance with the purity of their hearts) beckons God to enter in to the Holy of Holies which they have corporately gathered around.

Like the dew of Hermon, unity is also the refreshment that God sends as a sign of his blessing. When we have unity it delights our hearts and re-energizes our spirits by mutual strengthening. Think of the courage from brotherhood, the pleasure of friendship, the uplift of worship that is “in rhythm.” It is the mark of God’s blessing, the refreshing sign of his eternal promise of life. Like the flow of fresh mountain snowmelt to the parched waterbed in the valley below (for Mount Hermon’s snowmelt watered the Jordan). Like the refreshment of water after a long drought.

Spiritual laws from Proverbs 25

The Law of Private Confrontation

“Do not go out hastily to argue your case; otherwise, what will you do in the end, when your neighbor humiliates you? Argue your case with your neighbor, and do not reveal the secret of another.” 8-9

 Never, ever call somebody out in public. Take them aside to address the issue. It shows respect.
The Law of False Advertisement

“Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him, for he refreshes the soul of his masters. Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of his gifts falsely.” 13-14
Don’t advertise what you can’t produce. We are really turned off by people who don’t deliver.

The Law of Moderation in Good Things

“Have you found honey? Eat only what you need, that you not have it in excess and vomit it.” 16
Any good thing only remains good if handled with temperance. Pace your pleasure.
The Law of the Chance-based Resolution
“The cast lot puts an end to strife and decides between the mighty ones.” 18
If neither side is budging in a conflict, agree first to go with the ruling of the coin and then flip on it. (It’s not unbiblical and you will save a lot of stress that way.)
The Law of the Clam
“A brother offended is harder to be won that a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a citadel.” 19
Once you offend someone they’re going to tune you out and it will take 20 times longer.

How glory departed from the temple

In Ezekiel 9, the glory of God departed from the temple in three steps:

1. Wicked leaders (not the priests who alone were permitted) held censors of incense. Worship was offered to God in ways not directed by God. (That’s how you get megachurches without prayer meetings.)
2. Women wept for Talmuz in the temple. Talmuz was the God of fertility who went down to the underworld each year to get a successful crop. (Do we cry for success and not for God?) “There is no fugitive atom that exists outside the sovereign reign and lordship of Christ in the universe.” – Bob Hitching
3. Men, with their backs to the temple, worshipped the sun. (Do we recreate an easy god and worship him within the church?)

When these abominations occurred, the glory of God lifted off the temple on the cherubim and went up the mountain overlooking the city, abandoning the oblivious people. What a tragedy!

The Lord who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf

Then I said, “Do not be shocked, nor fear them. The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.” – Deuteronomy 1:29-33

The All-powerful Creator Being “will fight on your behalf.” What?! That’s like an NCAA Division I basketball player playing in the kindergarten class. That’s like Chuck Norris vs. a white belt. There is no even match, no equality there. “No contest.” If it were a sporting event, we would get bored, knowing the outcome without a doubt. The only excitement would be the intensity of the royal pounding that our adversaries and adversities will get when he steps onto the field. Is this true for us? We can know, not only hope, that God will win if he goes up against…well…anything. He’s the Incredible Hulk and Satan himself is a Cabbage Patch Kid.

He carries us “like a man carries his son, in all our ways.” He says, “Hold onto me tight,” and then we bury our head in his chest as he plunges into the night with the speed of a chariot. When the quicksand sucks us down, he lifts us up – and his feet can walk on water. In all our ways. There is no part he forgets; even if we forget to mention it or confess it, he deals with it. He is more aware of our needs than we are. Nor does he leave us for a moment like the child who gets lost in Macy’s among the clothes, that we would be overcome by the Enemy. No, in all our ways, his watch is vigilant, like a lover who can’t take his eyes off his bride.

“He Himself,” and no other. God does not send G.A.s to teach his classes. No lesser substitute we have on our side, but the very King of Kings. The one who controls the U.N. like a collection of marionettes has set his intentions on your success.

Indeed, if “the Lord goes before us,” whose voice makes the mountains skip like rams, our path will indeed be made straight and clear. He will eat the spider webs for us, since he walks the trail in front. If there is a gap too far to jump, he will straddle it and help us across. He will make sure we are following with him, but urge us to hurry up. He will absorb the brunt of attacks and be the first target for marauders.

What does it mean that he “goes ahead of you on your way”? It means he is not behind you, sitting in some tent, with a large battlefield map, who is unable to accompany you because he is too busy coordinating the big picture. No, he is able and willing to be our personal guide, our Sacajawea, our Sméagol. To go ahead of us also means nothing which besets us will catch him by surprise. Anything that happens to you has been filtered through him. He hacks through the underbrush with a sword that pierces joint and marrow. You need only follow his back (in its glory as Moses saw), and the trail of destroyed barriers he leaves behind.

We are allowed to have no fear of the future with the Lord fighting for us, going before us. We only need keep our eyes on him, as he moves ahead, as he engages the enemies. Lose sight of him somehow—that’s when we need to fear. Life is not a path, so much as a person.