It's an interesting observation that when you turn on the light, the darkness has to leave first. Therefore, the darkness must travel faster than the light. Right?
Yeah, I know. It's a silly spoof on the laws of physics. And every time I hear it, I imagine this light spreading out from the center. Rushing forward in bright rays as the darkness races, frantically, to find a place. And I wonder, what happens when there is no place?
It made me wonder if this is how it works in the next age, when God returns to our universe in all His glory. He pours Himself into Jesus, spreading from Jesus into us, and then out into everything. Where will the darkness go?
I use darkness as a metaphor for evil. Light, of course, being righteousness. When God's righteousness is front and center every place You look, where will evil go? We know that God is true. When we're in His presence, we can't even lie to ourselves. He knows too much. Friends tell me I'm a good person. And I know there's so much that I'm ashamed of. Plus all of the stuff I don't know yet. Imagine having that shame put front and center before you every second of every day. Knowing you could never be good enough, and knowing that it's absolutely true. Soul crushing.
Hell - the place without God - goes hand-in-hand with judgement and punishment. What if it's not? Those words carry an undertone that God chose to hurt us. What if that hurt is a natural consequence of sin? We long to hide from the truth of God's presence. He puts us to shame. Not just with what we did wrong, but our attempts to cover it up too. When God's light fills the universe, where would you hide?
I think of punishment in terms of reconciliation. I punished my children in an attempt to replace a long term pain with short term pain. The purpose being to teach them right and wrong, bringing them back into our family and to God. That's not what will happen here.
In this scenario, the dark is driven out by the light. It's not reconciling, not balancing. The light takes over. Period. It's all light. So what does that mean?
Monday, March 23, 2020
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Selfish Altruism
I sat at lunch today listening to a couple of guys talk about stories. When I sat down, one of them was talking about a Ray Bradbury short story. A smart house survives an apocalypse and slowly breaks down. The conversation centered on Bradbury's point that nature left to itself erodes.
Later in the same conversation, they discussed Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. One of these gentlemen noted how Ayn Rand treated religion as a kind of selfish altruism. Religious people do nice things because they expect to be rewarded by God. I'm nice because of what I get out of it.
In one sense, Ayn Rand would be right. God does promise reward. And the perfectly natural thing is to seek that reward. And yes, that would be selfish. Ironically, chasing after the reward doesn't get you the reward.
Today's sermon covered Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-29). Our pastor pointed out how the last servant, who just buried the money, acted out of laziness, using fear as en excuse. The master in the story praised the two employees who produced something out of what was provided and returned more than what they had when they started. This aligns perfectly with Jesus' analogies of bearing fruit.
Okay, how is all of this related? God asks us to do what is unnatural, or super natural, if you like. The natural thing is to be selfish - look for what I get out of it. Over and over the Bible stresses what the apostle Paul calls dying to the flesh, or doing what isn't natural. Yes, it is possible to the right thing just because it's right. But it's not natural.
Nature breaks down. Nature always destroys itself. In nature, things decay. Why? Because nature was never intended to exist on its own. God designed a kingdom. He is, after all, a King. He created us as His means of flowing into the universe, bringing new life. Restoring, refreshing, and ordering the universe away from the decay. His life flowing through us into everything around us. Think of the champagne glass pyramid. You pour champagne into the top glass until it overflows and fills the level below. Then those overflow and fill the next level down. All the way to the very bottom. God placed us on the top level to overflow and spill out into the world. But we (I) raise an umbrella and let the champagne splatter on the floor.
This is where Jesus stepped in. He became the very top glass. God pours into Him all His love. Jesus pours into us. And so on. That love, the champagne if you will, makes it possible to act super naturally. Or, as Paul describes it, the flesh submits to the spirit. Life instead of death.
Later in the same conversation, they discussed Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. One of these gentlemen noted how Ayn Rand treated religion as a kind of selfish altruism. Religious people do nice things because they expect to be rewarded by God. I'm nice because of what I get out of it.
In one sense, Ayn Rand would be right. God does promise reward. And the perfectly natural thing is to seek that reward. And yes, that would be selfish. Ironically, chasing after the reward doesn't get you the reward.
Today's sermon covered Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-29). Our pastor pointed out how the last servant, who just buried the money, acted out of laziness, using fear as en excuse. The master in the story praised the two employees who produced something out of what was provided and returned more than what they had when they started. This aligns perfectly with Jesus' analogies of bearing fruit.
Okay, how is all of this related? God asks us to do what is unnatural, or super natural, if you like. The natural thing is to be selfish - look for what I get out of it. Over and over the Bible stresses what the apostle Paul calls dying to the flesh, or doing what isn't natural. Yes, it is possible to the right thing just because it's right. But it's not natural.
Nature breaks down. Nature always destroys itself. In nature, things decay. Why? Because nature was never intended to exist on its own. God designed a kingdom. He is, after all, a King. He created us as His means of flowing into the universe, bringing new life. Restoring, refreshing, and ordering the universe away from the decay. His life flowing through us into everything around us. Think of the champagne glass pyramid. You pour champagne into the top glass until it overflows and fills the level below. Then those overflow and fill the next level down. All the way to the very bottom. God placed us on the top level to overflow and spill out into the world. But we (I) raise an umbrella and let the champagne splatter on the floor.
This is where Jesus stepped in. He became the very top glass. God pours into Him all His love. Jesus pours into us. And so on. That love, the champagne if you will, makes it possible to act super naturally. Or, as Paul describes it, the flesh submits to the spirit. Life instead of death.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Expression
Like most posts here, this began as an imaginary conversation. A friend made an off handed comment that they can't tell how I feel. Two weeks later, a make believe me starts talking about why...
I hide my feelings. On purpose. I have this image of my mother telling me to control my temper. It's set in their bed room. I don't remember much else, like why. And I know there were plenty of other opportunities for her to say that.
I remember crying a lot when my first pet bird died. We buried him out by the side of the house. I remember crying in junior high. It was a pickup basketball game. I'm short, nonathletic, and uncoordinated. I get picked last and never got the ball. For some reason, this one time, it bothered me. I left the game and one of the older guys came over to check on me.
In all of those cases, the advice was stop feeling. Now that's not what those well meaning people were trying to say. At least I assume so. All I know is that I heard that my feelings were bad and expressing them was socially forbidden. Well, expressing them in that manner, which is the only manner I know how. So either I express myself in an unacceptable way or not at all.
Wait, you say, there's a middle ground. No, there isn't. That's what I'm trying to say. You see this middle ground, but I don't. Like a blind spot, it's just not there.
The only way I can function in this world is by keeping tight reins on my emotions. I can't let go, not for a second. It's happened. And the fallout isn't pretty. It takes a very unique and caring person to see past it. Those people are very rare.
I imagine heaven as a place where either I'm fixed, or everyone else has the patience to put up with the insanity. I try to create that kind of place here for Vania. I suspect that she struggles with this too. And I don't want to suppress her emotions. I want her to feel. To find rest in being herself, the person God created her to be.
I hide my feelings. On purpose. I have this image of my mother telling me to control my temper. It's set in their bed room. I don't remember much else, like why. And I know there were plenty of other opportunities for her to say that.
I remember crying a lot when my first pet bird died. We buried him out by the side of the house. I remember crying in junior high. It was a pickup basketball game. I'm short, nonathletic, and uncoordinated. I get picked last and never got the ball. For some reason, this one time, it bothered me. I left the game and one of the older guys came over to check on me.
In all of those cases, the advice was stop feeling. Now that's not what those well meaning people were trying to say. At least I assume so. All I know is that I heard that my feelings were bad and expressing them was socially forbidden. Well, expressing them in that manner, which is the only manner I know how. So either I express myself in an unacceptable way or not at all.
Wait, you say, there's a middle ground. No, there isn't. That's what I'm trying to say. You see this middle ground, but I don't. Like a blind spot, it's just not there.
The only way I can function in this world is by keeping tight reins on my emotions. I can't let go, not for a second. It's happened. And the fallout isn't pretty. It takes a very unique and caring person to see past it. Those people are very rare.
I imagine heaven as a place where either I'm fixed, or everyone else has the patience to put up with the insanity. I try to create that kind of place here for Vania. I suspect that she struggles with this too. And I don't want to suppress her emotions. I want her to feel. To find rest in being herself, the person God created her to be.
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