ShupFace: What Would Aslan Do?

It’s been about a week since my last post. Today, for the first time since writing about it, I sat down and spent time with God. I have been feeling a bit embarrassed about writing such a full on break down of what needs to change and then still feeling like nothing is changing. I think it’s clear that I’m a guy who likes fast results. Unfortunately life doesn’t always work out how I’d like.

I was reading 1 Timothy when I came across a passage that I found both challenging and encouraging:

1 Timothy 6:11-12

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I want to pursue righteousness. I want to pursue love! It will be a fight at times, sure. But it is the good fight. I have been called to eternal life!

I have to begin by asking your forgiveness for the length and rambling nature of this post. I just needed to get some of this out of my brain and hopefully it makes some kind of sense.

So the sermon this Sunday was about the truth and how it changes everything. The point of the sermon was essentially that as Christians we know the truth about God and that should change our lives. If it doesn’t then something is seriously wrong. It got me thinking. We were created to bring glory to the name of God and I really do want to. But why do I want to? And if I do, then why am I so far from giving my whole life over to God?

I can think of a number of reasons for glorifying God, some good and some not so good:

1. Because He’s worthy

He is the Lord God, the creator of the universe. He is perfect, holy and pure. All glory is His. What this means for me is that I should glorify God because it’s the right thing to do. I don’t think I have a particularly strong sense of the holiness of God. I understand the concept that He is holy and cannot abide sin. I understand what that means for our relationship and how that had to be overcome. But it’s all very intellectual.

There is a sense in which I try not to sin because I know that it’s wrong, but I think the other factors in my desire to glorify God play a larger part than His worthiness. This seems bizarre to me because the best reason to glorify God should be that He is worthiness. Surely all other good reasons to glorify Him stem from this reason.

2. Because He saved me

I was a sinner destined for hell when God sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. That singular act of grace led to my forgiveness and reconciliation with God. The depths of that love are unfathomable to me. It is only recently that I have begun to really be affected by how big of a deal it is that the son of God went through that for me.

This understanding has led me to value God more and desire a closer relationship with Him. But I don’t really think that much of my desire to glorify God comes directly from feelings of gratitude. I’m not sure why. Maybe this is changing, I don’t know.

3. Because I love Him

This is one that I have struggled with for a while. We are commanded to love God and I know that it is right, but I don’t really feel like I do love Him. Part of the problem for me is that I’m not really sure what love feels like. Most people take it for granted that they love their family, and maybe I do love my family, but I don’t just assume that I do. I wonder if this is what love feels like for everyone else.

So if I don’t even know if I love my family how much more complicated to begin loving an incorporeal spiritual character who mostly exists for me through my relationship to the bible.

Essentially I view love for God the same way I view faith in God. It is a change I cannot effect in myself through sheer willpower. It is something that I must pray for and ask the Holy Spirit to change in me.

4. Because I want to be saved

When we become Christians we are justified by faith, God declares us free from sin. But in the meantime we are still flawed creatures, still sinning. Through the Holy Spirit we begin a process of sanctification, becoming more like Christ. If we think we are saved but can’t see any evidence of sanctification in our lives then we must question whether our repentance was genuine.

Thinking about your faith like this can lead to attempts to justify yourself by works. I do not believe that I am saved by virtue of my actions, but I do sometimes feel like I need to prove that I am saved.

It is a complicated problem because I can’t just stop actively trying to glorify God and hope that he changes me into someone who desires to glorify God for all the right reasons. I still know it is right to glorify God and I should always be striving to work with the Holy Spirit. All I can do is pray that my motives will be purified too.

5. Because I want to be good

The reality of my life is that I am a Christian and I have committed the rest of my life to God. I can’t really imagine doing anything for the rest of my life and being satisfied with half-arsing it. I want to be the best Christian I can be.

But that attitude is very much about me. It’s about my desire to be successful at what I do and what I am. I want to know that I’m good at being a Christian and to some extent I’m sure I want to be recognised by other people as a success too.

Apart from my reasons for glorifying God, I can also think of some things which stop me from giving my whole life to God:

1. Selfish Ambition

There are things I want to do with my life that seem so much more fun, more exciting or more fulfilling than what God wants to do with my life. I want to be rich, famous and successful. I want to be a writer or an artist. I want to get married and raise a family. Surrendering my life to God means acknowledging that what he has planned for me is more important than what I want to achieve. It means acknowledging that God comes first.

One ambition I find particularly hard to overcome is the desire to be liked. Surely what God thinks of me is more important than what people think of me. But God is incorporeal and anyway he’s already forgiven me right? I have to live alongside these people for the next eighty years. Life is easier if people like you.

There are so many things that  our society teaches us to value that are not things that God values. Conceptually I understand that this life is infinitesimally small in comparison to an eternity in heaven, but that is a very hard concept to keep in perspective when this is the only life I’ve ever known.

2. Experience

Our society values experience very highly. That is why drug use and sexual promiscuity are so prevalent. The idea that we might miss out on an important or fundamental experience of life worries us. People tell us how important it is to travel and experience other cultures, or how important it is to have had sex with different people before getting married.

While I may not care for traveling, I do chase after experiences and the idea of missing out really does bother me. But there are more important things than trying to satisfy ourselves by chasing after experiences. We should be doing what is pleasing to God.

3. Pride

I like who I am. It is unfortunate that who I am is a particularly sinful and wretched creature. I find it hard to be repentant about sin that I feel is a part of my identity. My crude humour, acid comments and general enjoyment of shocking people are all probably behaviours I could leave behind, because they do very little to build people up, but who am I without them?

I struggle to find my self-worth in what God thinks of me or in what God has done for me. Maybe because he has done it for everyone else? I am set apart and chosen by God, just like every other Christian.

But living like this is just another way of saying that I am still the Lord of my own life. That I know what is best for me. No matter what I say about God if I am not willing to surrender my life into his hands, all of my life, then what does any of it mean? If I trust that God is perfect and pure, if I trust that he knows what is best for me, then why am I hanging onto this stuff?

4. Comfort

It is easy to keep living the way I’m living. Half committed to God, half committed to myself (to the world). I can talk to God when I want, when I need that reassurance. But in the meantime I can do what I want. In many ways I think I would be okay with a mediocre life by the world’s standards. Living for God means striving for God. If I live for myself then when I let myself down it’s okay, because only I have to deal with the consequences. Unfortunately the biblical consequences for spiritual laziness are far more intimidating.

I worry that in our culture Christians don’t ask enough of themselves and I have fallen into that trap. I have heard numerous times from missionaries about how shocked their overseas churches would be to see the state of Western Christianity and how shallow our faith is.

I think it is important to address the failings in my attitude even though these are probably not things that I can change on my own. I do want to change for God and I have the power of the Holy Spirit working inside me already. Just the fact that I have come to this point is encouraging. But now I have to continue, this is where the real struggle begins. To live for God, to give my life over to him.

Pray for me?

Term 3, 2008 - My bible study group of senior high boys has teamed up with the girls’ bible study group. While we’ll still meet separately, we will be working through the same studies, written by all of us as we go. The leaders (with support from all the members) decided it would be good to push ourselves a bit intellectually this term. We chose a series loosely called ‘What Christians Believe’: in essence, a very unorganised topical doctrine series. For example, this afternoon the boys and I will be looking at ‘Creation, the Fall and Sin’. There is a number of things we try to balance -  studying theoretical concepts with loving God’s word, understanding big theological words with everyday explanations (for all the normal people we meet each day) and knowing about God with knowing God.

They might outnumber us in the ratio of 3:1 but I think we can outshine them at impressing you-know-who. Competition is always healthy, right?

Anyway, last week was the first in the series and I’m just going to give a quick recap of the major points that stood out for me, rather than recount the whole thing with logical flow (as if). The topic was ‘God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit (and their relationship with each other - trinity)’.

• Jesus shows us exactly what God is like.
•  The Holy Spirit is a person, a ‘he’, not a vague force. He is totally equal with the Father and Son in every way.
•  The trinity is pretty much impossible to explain, but it works like this; The Father plans it, the Son acheives it, the Spirit applies it to us.
• The most mentioned attribute of God in the bible is actually that God is Holy

When I take the first and last point together, I’m really surprised. In some of the stories about Jesus I interpret him to be portraying the love, but sometimes at the expense of the holy. For instance, he talks to, associates and even comes in contact with ceremonial unclean people, in order to show them they are loved. However, after reading in Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1 and 3, it’s pretty clear to me that Jesus shows us an exact representation of who God is - he has the fullness of God dwelling in him. So, it follows that all the things Jesus does in the gospels are, by definition (since it’s God doing them), holy. I don’t know why, but I just find the consistency interesting and somewhat reassuring.

I also think that last dot point really was the coolest. The bible tells us more than anything else about God that he’s Holy. At first I wasn’t too excited or impressed. Then it dawned on me (as I read my ‘ABC of theology’ book) that it’s actually a good thing. If God is holy (set apart in moral perfection) then everything else about him will be impacted by that. His love is a holy love - perfectly good and unconditional with pure motivation. His anger is a holy anger - he doesn’t just throw tantrums, he hates sin and evil and will always eventually bring justice. His salvation is a holy salvation - it’s perfect and unfailing in what it sets out to acheive. Suddenly the cold seriousness of ‘God is holy’ became kind of fresh and important to me. I smiled.

My friend Cath and I visited our old church yesterday. The minister who preached isn’t my favourite, but his talk was pretty good. I don’t really know many people at the church, but I miss it more than any other church I’ve been to. I especially miss the hard-hitting sermons and my bible study.

Unusually for me, it was the music at the end of the service that really got me thinking. The band played really well and I realised how much I have missed good worship music. I don’t automatically associate well-played music with genuine worship, but I do find it easier to concentrate on the words and the meaning when I’m not distracted by the musical inadequacies.

Lately I have been focussing a lot on God’s attitude to sin and the inescapable truth of my sinful nature. On Sunday I got a gentle reminder that God loves me and went to a lot of effort to save me from my sin. It was pretty nice.

I have been thinking about God lately. More than usual anyway. I have been reading a book by John Piper and I have been challenged. I particularly like this verse:

Matthew 13:44-46

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

What is my life compared to what I have in God? What an awesome concept!

But it hurts my heart because I know there is such a huge difference between what I am now and what I want to be for God. I am so small and so wrong and it hurts.

But I need to be happy! It’s good that it hurts. I think it’s like exercise, you need to be pushed hard for things to get better. It hurts my heart because I know I need to change, because I really want to change.

God is changing my heart from a heart of stone, a heart that doesn’t care, to a heart that desires Him.

Funny bible related comic. I’m proud of myself because I instantly understood who it was about, even before I saw his name on the wall or the title at the top.

Speaking of funny bible related comics, SinFest is pretty great and worthy of your time.

I love prayer right now.

This is how it’s supposed to be all the time. Too often prayer feels like a chore or an obligation. Too often I’m heading to bed when I remember that I haven’t spent any time with God, when all I want is to go to sleep. It’s crazy to think that the God who made the universe actually wants to hear from me. His son died on the cross so I could be in a relationship with Him, but I can’t find time to talk to Him? It’s crazy.

But I love prayer right now.

Recently I was bashing my head against the keyboard of my computer, trying to do some work for uni. As a last resort I threw out a little prayer. “God could you just make this happen now?” Two thousand words later I’m claiming credit for a breakthrough I thought would never come. How can I do that? How can I come to God in a moment of pure anxious, desperation and then not credit Him when my prayer is answered?

I was thinking today about how much I love being a youth leader. In particular how much I love being on youth camps and missions. And yet they always seem so intimidating before hand. They seem intimidating because there is real work to be done and I know I’m not capable on my own. But I’m not on my own! When I’m on mission I need God and I know it. I’m praying all the time because I couldn’t cope otherwise. I love mission because I’m leaning on God for every little step.

I love prayer because I get to thank God for so much, for who He is. I get to tell Him how sorry I am and how much I want to be better for Him. I get to talk to my God and tell Him that I need Him.

I was brought up with two different concepts of God’s judgement in regards to unrepentant sinners. The first was the biblical imagery of fire and brimstone. The second is the idea of complete separation from God. I have been wondering lately if these ideas are definitely pointing to the concept of eternal suffering in hell.

If all that is good comes from God then eternal separation from Him means separation from everything good. We know from genesis that creation was good and so perhaps separation from our creator means being uncreated.

The Book of Revelations presents us with the image of judgement as a lake of fire. It reminded me of the description of God’s anger as a consuming fire. The lake of fire is also called the second death and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest this death is final.

The hypothesis goes something like this:

When we die our bodies are buried but our spirit goes to a different place. For those of us who have faith in God that is the paradise that Jesus spoke of on the cross. The spirits of those who have rejected God end up in Hades. These are not their eternal dwelling places.

The old heaven and earth will one day be destroyed to make way for a new heaven and earth and God will resurrect everyone who ever lived and judge them. Those with their name in the book of life will live on the new earth. Anyone whose name is not in the book of life will be completely destroyed. Along with the sinners, God will destroy Hades and death because there will be no need for them on the new earth.

I don’t believe that God’s reason for destroying sinners rather than condemning them to eternal suffering is because destruction is the more compassionate of the two choices. His mercy, grace and compassion have been displayed through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is His perfect and unrelenting justice and wrath that are displayed on those who do not accept that sacrifice.

The judgement and destruction of the unrighteous is the conclusion of God’s plan for dealing with sin. God’s new creation, His new heaven and earth, will be pure and unblemished. Sin will have been dealt with once and for all.

Feel free to ask me any questions or share any passages that you believe contradict these ideas. I would love to get some discussion going on this idea.

I was reading Dooce just now, as I do often. Heather infrequently posts collections of horrid emails she recieves. Some are pretty retarded, bad spelling and all. But others are down right hateful:

Condolences for your miscarriage might be in order if you didn’t make a career out of thumbing your nose at God.

If you ever wonder why some people hate Christians (or more generally religious people) this is a pretty good indicator.

God is not your excuse to be a self-righteous tool.

My church has been doing a series recently attempting to answer hard questions. Last Sunday’s sermon addressed the question of suffering or “Why God lets bad things happen to good people”.

The sermon was quite good and the speaker stated that while we can never really be sure why God lets bad things happen, he believes that the world has been pretty rotten ever since Adam and Eve were ejected from Eden. Essentially we would be in paradise were it not for sin. Some suffering in the world such as wars are directly caused by our sinful actions, while other catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods are a result of living in a broken world. He also discussed other aspects of suffering such as how we should respond to hardship.

I believe it is true to say that suffering happens as a result of sin. One thing I wanted to address is the idea that God allows bad things to happen to essentially good or innocent people. That question is hinged on the idea that there are some innocent people suffering in a broken world as a result of the misdeeds of other sinners. The truth is actually that we are all sinners and the bible tells us that the wages of sin are death. God does not sit idly by and watch as bad things happen to good people. He works as we continue to reject him, until ultimately a good thing happens to a bad person. God’s perfect and righteous justice is displayed in the death of sinners.

I just want to be clear, I’m not saying that all suffering can be put down to a specific sin, we are all sinful and have contributed to the fallen state of our world. If you have cancer or you’re depressed it’s not necessarily a case of identifying one specific sin that is the root cause.

Just as God warned Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge or he would surely die, so we too have been warned of the punishment for our sin.