Stop and Think

Part of my morning routine is to read my Bible. This morning I read Job 4, Psalm 20, and 2 Corinthians 5. There is a natural progression to the words I found this morning.

“Stop and think! Do the innocent die?
    When have the upright been destroyed?”

- The words of Eliphaz to Job (Job 4:7, NLT)

“Will you discredit my justice
    and condemn me just to prove you are right?
Are you as strong as God?
    Can you thunder with a voice like his?
All right, put on your glory and splendor,
    your honor and majesty.
Give vent to your anger.
    Let it overflow against the proud.
Humiliate the proud with a glance;
    walk on the wicked where they stand.
Bury them in the dust.
    Imprison them in the world of the dead.
Then even I would praise you,
    for your own strength would save you.”

- The words of God to Job, Eliphaz, and all who will listen (Job 40:8-14, NLT)

“For the king trusts in the Lord.
    The unfailing love of the Most High will keep him from stumbling.

You will capture all your enemies.
    Your strong right hand will seize all who hate you.
You will throw them in a flaming furnace
    when you appear.
The Lord will consume them in his anger;
    fire will devour them.”

- The words of God to all who would trust in Him (Psalm 20:7-9 NLT)

“I know that you can do anything,
    and no one can stop you.

 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’
    It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
    things far too wonderful for me.”

- The words of Job to God (Job 42:2, 3, NLT)

“So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.”

- The words of God to all (2 Corinthians 5:6-10, NLT)

“So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

- The words of God to all who would follow Him (2 Corinthians 5:20, 21)

In Job 4, Eliphaz is saying that Job is missing a point because “God never allows the innocent to die or the upright to be destroyed.” God’s words to Job and Eliphaz, in Job 40, make it clear that God is a God of justice. God will always be on the side of the innocent and upright; but this does not mean that the innocent and upright will not suffer or die. In Psalm 20, God makes it clear that, one day, all will be made right and the enemies of the innocent and the enemies of the upright will be judged. In Job 42, Job recognizes that his understanding is limited and that no one can know the complete mind of God. God’s mysteries, still hidden from humans, are like the mysteries of the depths of the ocean and the far reaches of the universe.

The New Testament passages remind us that even when the innocent die, they are only trading their earthly bodies for eternal bodies. We can trust that all will receive justice and those who have trusted in the sinless Son of God will be made right in Him. That is good news worthy of telling a hurting and broken world. Praise be to God.

Einstein on Faith and Religion

Albert Einstein had a complicated relationship with faith and religion. Some of the things he said show that he had faith that guided him toward truth and understanding. For Einstain, faith was a source of feeling and rationality. Yet, his concepts of faith were not organized as a particular faith such as faith in Jesus. He seems instead to believe in a much more generic faith that guides the scientist.

“Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up.  But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.  To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein^[1]

Other things he said certainly pointed away from historic Christianity:

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me.” – Einstein in a letter written in 1954.

and,

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.[2]

I am not here to make judgements on Einstein’s faith, work, or philosophical bent; God is the only true judge, full of grace and truth. It seems to me that Einstein was a seeker: a seeker of knowledge wherever he might find it. Certainly, he had his own cultural biases and blinders which kept him from looking in certain directions. Despite the high pedestal on which he sits in our culture, he was human like everyone else. He has taught us much about science and I believe he can also teach us something about the way we seek knowledge. Knowledge may be found in any area of life: science, religion, philosophy, faith in the ways of the Bible, and faith in Jesus Christ. I will choose to seek truth in every area of life.

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[1] “Science and Religion,” Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 – 49; published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. http://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html

[2] “Science and Religion,” Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 – 49; published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. http://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html

Eclipses and Eggs

Annie Dillard went to see a total eclipse of the sun in 1979 and wrote about it in “Total Eclipse,” published as part of her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk. She speaks of the terrifying nature of a total eclipse and says that “Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.” She describes the eeriness of totality and the awe it inspires. One can tell that, for her, it was a profoundly moving experience. Then, in the last paragraphs she speaks of walking away from the hill on which she and her husband had watched the eclipse.

“…when the total eclipse ended, an odd thing happened.

When the sun appeared as a blinding bead on the ring’s side, the eclipse was over. The black lens cover appeared again, back-lighted, and slid away. At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: We all hurried away. We were born and bored at a stroke. We rushed down the hill. We found our car; we saw the other people streaming down the hillsides; we joined the highway traffic and drove away.

We never looked back. It was a general vamoose, and an odd one, for when we left the hill, the sun was still partially eclipsed—a sight rare enough, and one which, in itself, we would probably have driven five hours to see. But enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.”

The last two sentences of the article speak of more than just her experience of the eclipse. Dillard is one who sees the world in all its glory and has described it well for others in the books she has written. She knows of mystery, splendor, and glory. She also knows that we humans do not live in experiences of rapture forever. We spend most of our time in the mundane world of home. “One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.”

I am one who is fortunate to work at a job in which I am paid to live in the world of glory, mystery and splendor. I get to interpret God, the mysteries of the universe, and creation to a world that is weighed down by expense records and balance sheets. Dillard says, “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never…. the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind’s sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy.” Most of us live in the day-to-day of eggs and jobs and marriages and kids. We only briefly think about eclipses, theology, creation, and the mysteries of the universe. We are too busy working for that next meal of “two eggs over easy.” Most of the time, we are more comfortable in the world of eggs and expense records. Then, occasionally, the sun is blotted out from the sky and we consider our place in the world. Like ancients who believed that a wolf had bitten a chunk out of the sun, we wonder at the complexities of our world and are reminded of things we had not thought about for some time. We are faced with the size of the moon relative to our earth and to our sun. We are reminded that our universe is full of stars and moons and planets and things beyond this earth. Suddenly the “two eggs over easy” seem insignificant considering the bigger questions of how we got here and where we are headed. But it only lasts a moment. The total eclipse is over and “From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.”

The Mystery of Jesus

 

Regarding the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Bible, Bruce Milne had this to say.

“The mystery of Jesus Christ is the theme of this gospel; always beyond us, yet always summoning us to explore it more fully. . . . the Godhead will be our endless, though blissful task in the world to come; but we can begin it now.”[1]

An “endless but blissful task in the world to come;” here and now, we struggle to understand who Jesus is, the place of God the Father, and the person of the Holy Spirit. Many times we are challenged by new religious movements like Oneness Pentecostalism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and Jehovah’s Witnesses as they seek to explain the Godhead in other than orthodox and traditional ways. Yet, most of us have, at one time or another considered the conclusions to which they have been drawn. The mystery of Jesus is “always beyond us.” None of us can say that we have this mystery worked out perfectly in our mind, none of us have completed the blissful or difficult task of exploring the mystery fully. Perhaps a good place for us to start would be to study and meditate upon the simple, yet sublime, words of the Nicene Creed from around 325 CE.

Nicene Creed[2]

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

(Hear more on October 2, 2016 as this will be the theme for the sermon at Bow Valley Christian Church, Calgary.)

Works Cited

Milne, Bruce. The Message of John: Here is Your King. Downers Grove, 1993.

Wikipedia. "Nicene Creed." Wikipedia. September 16, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed (accessed September 23, 2016).

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[1] (Milne 1993)

[2] (Wikipedia 2016)