First…….a disclaimer………I am against abortion. You probably suspected.

I regularly am accused of being a “one issue voter”.

And I am.

I cannot vote for any candidate who supports abortion………no matter how excellent they are otherwise.

WHY?

When making a difficult decision I often list the pros vs. the cons. You should try this.

Take a sheet of paper, make a “Pro” column and a “Con” column. Here is an example.

Pro

Good for the environment
Fights climate change
Pro workers
Good health care for all
Pro women’s rights
Supports LGBT
Grows the “safety net”
Welcomes refugees/immigrants
Helps the poor
Equal rights
Supports fair housing
Equal pay for equal work

Con

Kills 3000 children a day, every day

In order to support abortion, you must believe one of two things.

1. Abortion does not kill a child

or, failing that

2. Killing the child is justified.

Moreover, you have to be absolutely sure…….. because thousands of lives are at stake every day.

My challenge is this:

Spend a day studying a 16 week baby: what he is, what she does…………….what they FEEL.

Then spend a day studying what a first trimester abortion does from the perspective of the baby. Keep in mind that the baby receives no pain relief as he or she is dismembered.

Then answer the two questions. If you cannot say with absolute certainty that abortion does not kill the child……or failing that……..that the killing is justified, then you are endorsing an act that makes the Holocaust pale in comparison.

As of this year 60 million babies have been aborted in America alone (3000 a day). That is 1/3 of my children’s entire generation…….1/3 of the men that my granddaughters could have chosen for husbands have been killed. That is roughly equal to the population of the U.S. west of the Mississippi if you exclude Texas, California, and Louisiana.

Of those 60 million abortions, 30 million were women……..killed in the name of women’s rights.

Almost half of the aborted babies are black. Abortion is by far the leading cause of death in the black community, more than all other causes combined.

During the Civil War, if you asked a southerner what he was fighting for, he would have said “state’s rights”. Sounds noble. But, if you drill down a bit, the specific right that he was defending was the right to enslave a man based on his skin color, to kill him with impunity, to rape his wife, and then to sell her child. We now recognize slavery as a horrible crime. There is no difference between the logic defending slavery in 1860 and the logic defending abortion today. The arguments used to justify slavery and abortion are identical.

The only logically valid arguments in support of abortion are very simple.

Either

Abortion is right because……….we want it.

Or

Killing a child is justified in order to achieve a “greater good”.

As an aside, over 20 million of the children killed by abortion would have been of voting age for the 2016 election. They would have been disproportionately black and would have been disproportionately from liberal households. Did you ever wonder who would be president today, if they had been there to vote?

I don’t want to be rude by bringing up an unpleasant topic.

But, “what about hell? ”

The bible mentions it……a lot. It must be real. It is definitely important. But, what is it like and how should you deal with it?

You can ignore it or you can deny it. You can interpret it literally or figuratively. Let’s explore these.

Ignore it.

This is the most commonly chosen option. We’ve all been told about this very bad place and we’ve been told that if we keep on doing what we are doing that we could end up there. Ignoring it solves most of the problems of hell…at least for the short term. We don’t need to worry about the details. ….”will the coffee be cold?” We don’t need to stop doing the things that we are doing or start doing nice things for others. This is easy. It also fits nicely with the first rule of modern society. …..NEVER EVER tell anybody, even yourself, that what they are doing is wrong.

Deny it

This fits nicely with the belief that the physical universe is all that there is. “When you die. …the lights just go out” or “You die. ..you’re dirt” . This position is liberating. Because there is no absolute moral code….no universal right and wrong….I can do whatever I want……and (unlike ignoring hell) at least it is intellectually honest. But, it must lead to profound despair. By throwing out right and wrong you also throw out paradise. For this reason pure denial is not popular. It is typically blended with ignoring hell. Strangely, a lot of people accept the idea of paradise but deny hell. How do you have light without dark? Denial is often expressed in a statement like, “I can’t believe that a merciful loving God would send people to hell.” Don’t forget. …..for the greater good…..God sent his son to the cross. FWIW I believe that the cross broke God’s heart as does hell.

Literal

Hell is a deep pit full of fire and you will burn forever. Never mind the coffee. Hell is a place of unimaginable and unending physical pain. …the ultimate corporal punishment.

Figurative

The fire pit is metaphor. Hell is a bad place full of bad people.

So…how do you navigate this minefield?

I think that to ignore hell is foolish. It’s like driving down a road at night at 60 mph. You pass a sign that says:

“ROAD ENDS IN WATER. 100 FEET”

and you don’t slow down to assess the situation.

To deny hell is a little better…at least you thought about it. But, you had better be right……..because the cost of being wrong is unimaginable.

Literal vs. Figurative

This is harder. It is a continuum. …from a fiery pit to “cold coffee”.

I have to admit that I can’t sort this out very well. Most people have a very fuzzy image of a place that is unpleasant. It will be full of “bad people”……..that is……people who are not as “good” as me. After all….”I’m a good person”…..right? Isn’t it funny that the line separating the good people from the bad people always seems to be just below the person who is doing the talking. There is an irony here…… if “bad person” means people who are not as good as me……. then I will be one of the worst people in paradise.

“Good person” generally means that for the most part I don’t do bad things. And……. if the things that I do are wrong……well……they are justified by my circumstances. If I use the copier or fax at work for personal items. “It’s only a few cents a page……and besides I don’t have a copier/fax.” Or…….If I don’t track and pay sales tax on things that I order online. “It’s hard to keep up with and besides taxes are too high anyway.” Any of this sound familiar?

So…..I try a more practical approach. Hell is a place that is not pleasant. Trust me, you don’t want to be there.   It is separated by a gap that is uncrossable, even by God, from the ultimate source of love, satisfaction, and joy…..that is….God. The story of Lazarus and the rich man covers this nicely. It is the best description of hell that I can find.   Luke 16:19–31

There is another side to this discussion …and this is the most terrifying thought that I have had in years. If going to heaven is based on grace (the unearned forgiveness of sin)……and I believe that it is….then heaven us not going to be full of “good people”…..it is going to be full of forgiven sinners. The corollary is what terrifies me. Hell, for the most part, is not going to be full of “bad people”………it is going to be full of unforgiven sinners. So……. the common Christian pastime of sorting the people around us into “good” and “bad” piles is pointless. It’s not “good or bad” that counts……it’s “forgiven or unforgiven”.

In other words:

THE PEOPLE IN HELL ARE NOT GOING TO BE VERY MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE IN HEAVEN

Or:

HELL IS GOING TO BE FULL OF PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU AND ME

This puts a whole new level of urgency on the issue of salvation……….. both for me and for my unsaved friends.

Isn’t it amazing how little thought we give to paradise?

First…….. what is paradise?

Fluffy clouds? Halos and harps? A tropical garden?

If you take nothing else from this post, know this: Paradise is normal. Paradise is God’s first plan for you. He built a perfect, sustainable ecosystem and put us in it…. and then….HE joined us there. It was great….it was, in fact, perfect……..but we mismanaged it. We still mismanage it.

Most of the world that we see every day is the work of man. This world…..the world we have built……… is abnormal. No wonder we are unhappy. No wonder we are dissatisfied. We try hard. We sense God’s original design in our hearts but as a community, what we build falls short. The world that we live in is broken and we know it….. no doubt it is a disappointment to God. He wants so much more for us.

I have to think that Eden is the pattern for paradise. Beyond that I wouldn’t speculate on the details. However, the key feature of paradise is that there will be a close relationship between God and man. We will see him, talk with him, visit with him……enjoy his company. We will be surrounded by his love and his generosity. I don’t worry too much about the rest of it. Will there be poison ivy? What about my favorite food?  Will my dog be there? Will my family & friends be there?………… OK, I do worry a bit about that.

I suspect that the Garden of Eden in Genesis is at least partly symbolic. I don’t claim to know the details of what heaven will be like. The general shape of God’s original plan for you is a place where all of your needs are met. There will be no hazards. The things that you sense in your heart to be evil just won’t be there. That will be the new normal.   God the father, your creator, will be very close…… you will be at peace, at rest………….and you will be satisfied……….because you will be where you belong.   You will finally …… for the first time………be in THE place that is NORMAL for you. You will be in the place that God made you for………. the place that God made for you.

Wisdom from the X-files

Can there be a more important question? Your entire path in life will be altered by your answer to this seemingly simple question. Everything that you do today will be affected. And yet, very few of us have given it the thought that it deserves. We avoid it because there is no clear unambiguous answer. We avoid it because the consequences of being wrong could be devastating. We avoid it because we don’t like being told what to do…….and what not to do.

This is a binary question…… there are only 2 possibilities and they are mutually exclusive.

The proof that God doesn’t exist:

This is really an unfair question. It is very hard to “prove” a negative……but I’ll try. What is real is limited to what can be measured by man using today’s technology. Or, if you can’t measure it……..it doesn’t exist. Since God cannot be found in a laboratory or in the fossil record, he cannot exist. The obvious problem with this is that every day we expand our reach. Science grows. Knowledge grows. And so, the definition of what is real expands. Things that were not real yesterday are real today…..things like magnetism, black holes, human DNA, the internet. Another problem is that very real, very important things that cannot be measured become not-real. Things like love, honor, hope, fear, and respect. This position begins with an assumption. The assumption is that our knowledge is complete and since we haven’t “found” God, he can’t be real. This, of course is a bad assumption.

The proof that God does exist.

There is a reality that is beyond what we can measure. There are things that science cannot find and explain. We can sense it. Some people sense it more than others. We are fairly comfortable with this…….until it begins to interfere with our desires and our plans. This is a very important point. Many people reject God because they don’t like him interfering with their plans. Let’s face it, God can be disruptive. His plans can interfere with our plans.

So, there are things that are real that cannot be measured. They touch our lives every day. Joy, love, our thoughts, our personalities. The question is, “Is God one of them?” If you want God to physically manifest himself to you, you are probably going to be disappointed. He just doesn’t seem to work that way. So I look for indirect evidence of God.

The first of these is the large empty place in our spirit. We sense that we are incomplete. We are lonely, unloved, facing death, unsatisfied. We try to fill the void with busyness: work, hobbies, sports, food, alcohol, drugs, sex. Yet, it is always there, just under the surface. I have heard this described as a “God shaped hole”. We know that something is missing. No matter what we take from the physical world, there is a void in our spirit that we cannot fill in the material realm. The thing that is missing must be non-material. It must be spiritual.

The second is hope. ….or the lack of it. We will all die. From an historical perspective we will die soon…..possibly very soon. No matter how good your life is, it will end in a few years……at the most in a few decades. Science leaves us with nothing but despair. You will die and the lights will just go out. We intuitively sense that there must be more…….an afterlife. But, in order for there to be an afterlife……….paradise, there must be a creator, God.  You can argue about the fine points of his nature; but, ……No God….No afterlife. I sometimes hear people describe their vision of paradise. What they describe is a very nice place that conforms to their ideas of right and wrong. It is comfortable and is populated by people that they like. Anything and, for that matter, anyone that they don’t like is not allowed. If you notice, they never mention God in their paradise.   Because, in point of fact, their paradise has no external God…… THEY made it up…….THEY are the creator……..THEY are the God of their own paradise. This is very common. But, how can somebody who can’t create a handful of dirt create a paradise and resurrect themself? Better yet, if they can create paradise, why don’t they just make themself immortal.   Why?    Because they aren’t God. If you ask them if they are God, they will look at you like you have 2 heads.

The third is our innate moral code. We all know what is right and wrong. If you ask 1000 people to list 20 things that are right and 20 things that are wrong, you will pretty much get 1000 copies of the same list. This is built into our DNA. We are born with this knowledge. Where did it come from? Darwinian evolution doesn’t handle this well. Darwin tells us to eat and feed our children. Giving food to a homeless person whom we don’t know and whom we will never see again is not “positively adaptive”. Cheating on your spouse spreads your DNA. Nothing could make Darwin happier. But, we all know, without exception, that it is wrong. Our innate moral code came from somewhere……….God. Don’t get me wrong. It is common to do things that are wrong for a good reason. We all do this. We have an enormous capacity for justification. We do things every day that we have found ways, often highly creative, to justify. But, if we dig deep into our hearts, if we go to that small quiet, uncomfortable and possibly scary place……our conscience……we still know what is right and wrong. We just don’t do it. In modern society we have decided that if something makes us happy, even in the short term, then it must be OK. We have essentially replaced the restrictive concept of “right” with the more flexible concept of “it works for me”. This means right enough to get by with…..for me…..for today……even if it’s not “OK” for my neighbor. It’s hard to fit God into the modern concept of “OK”.

The forth is the historical record. Jesus died and was resurrected. At least 40 people saw him. 12 apostles spent the rest of their lives testifying to the resurrection. All but one of them died horrible deaths rather than deny it. Today we would execute a man based on the testimony of one or two witnesses. How can we ignore 40 witnesses? Therefore, Jesus is devine. Jesus endorses the Bible. Therefore the Bible is reliable. The Bible describes God in detail. Therefore God is real.

So, Christianity hinges on the resurrection. This is the most important decision in human history. This is the most important decision in your life. Did Jesus rise from the dead? I believe that the evidence says he did.

So, we are pretty much left with two possibilities: either there is a powerful external God who has created a Paradise…..or there is nothing. Incidentally, I have heard hell described as “the Nothing “.

We like God when we are in trouble, when we are in pain, when we are in desperate need. We don’t like him when we want something, when we have a perfectly serviceable justification, and he says, through that little voice inside of us, “No……that is wrong”. Faced with this problem, we typically push God back into the box, hide the box in a closet, and do what we want. Even then, though, when he is safely stowed away, when he can no longer interfere…….in our hearts we know that he is real, that he is right, and that we are wrong.

How do we decide? As Mulder and Scully on the X-files say, “The truth is out there”. How do we conform ourselves to the truth? Because fighting against the truth is a losing proposition.

If God doesn’t exist, then do whatever you want. But you better hurry, because you will soon die and the lights will just go out.

If God does exist, then why does he allow the “mystery”? Why doesn’t he appear in a cloud surrounded by lightning and thunder……shout my name. …..and give me my marching orders?

The answer is repeated over and over in the bible. At every encounter with God it is the same. God approaches, often from a great distance, he comes almost to us. Then……he requires us to take a small step toward him. Invariably this step requires faith, risk, and trust. Think of Peter walking on the water.

God comes 1000 miles. …..but he then requires us to take that one step.

The small step that is required of us is a token. It is tiny and ultimately symbolic. It is not much….certainly not payment in full….certainly not enough to entitle us to anything. But, from God’s perspective, it is about all that we can offer…..in that light it is huge. It symbolizes our desire for relationship with God….and it underscores our smallness before God. We cannot “earn” our relationship with God. We cannot purchase it. We cannot deserve it. We cannot do something that will obligate God to admit us into relationship. Ultimately, we offer our little token and God opens his arms.

God doesn’t display himself in a scientifically irrefutable way because he requires us to take that token step. …..with an act of faith…….a public acknowledgement of our love and desire for relationship.

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

We like to believe that we are in charge. Nobody likes to be told what to do. Even worse, we hate it when somebody tells us that what we are doing is wrong. We like to pass judgment on others and we hate it when others pass judgement on us.

These are reflections of our opinion of our place in the cosmos. We believe that we are the center of it all. What we like, what we dislike, what we think is right, what we think is wrong……..all of this is of utmost importance. It must be……. because we are of utmost importance. But,   where does this leave God? More to the point…… what is our correct relationship with God?

Our tendency is to use God as a tool to work our way through our “to do” list. We trot him out on Sunday for an hour and tell him how much we honor him. Before we go to bed at night we pray a prayer that sounds a whole lot like a “to do” list……….but often it is our “to do” list, not his. Worst of all, we pass judgement on his activities. How many times have you heard……or said,

“I can’t believe God would __________________”.

Think about the relationships in your life. Who is it that you give a “to do” list to? Who is it that you critique their behavior? Who is it that you shun because you don’t like the way they behave………a child, an employee, a servant, a subordinate, an enemy……..or the creator of the universe.

Either God created the universe and everything in it, including us……. and we are a tiny peripheral piece of it or we are the center of the universe…………………….and God is a supporting character.

You can tell which camp you usually fall into by looking at your thoughts about God……….. and your prayers to him. Do you praise him, thank him, ask for his guidance? Or do you give him assignments and tell him things that he is doing that need to be fixed? Do you go to him for moral guidance…….. or do you pass judgement on him?

Is your relationship with your creator centered on his majesty and on your humility? Or, is it centered on your hubris?

As Dirty Harry put it, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Or, as John the baptist said, “I must become less and he must become more. “