This is the first in a three part series.

Please don’t get upset until you have seen all three parts.

God is not possible.

A great many people believe this. They don’t come right out and say it……….that would not be “open minded”. But, if you pursue atheism back to its roots, that is where you wind up.

Why is God not possible? Ironically, it is because of the very traits that make him God.

God is not possible………because he does things that we cannot explain.

God is not possible………because he does things that we cannot do.

Good is not possible………because he does things that we cannot see and measure.

God is not possible………because he operates outside of the bounds of current science.

God is not possible……….because he is superior to us. He is “the boss”.

God is not possible………..because he has expectations of us……. expectations that interfere with our appetites. The only way to escape God’s expectations is to prove that he does not exist.

The very characteristics that make God God are the reasons that cause many of us to reject him.

Ironic isn’t it?

There is another irony. There is a very good correlation between people who consider themselves to be open minded or tolerant and people who reject God.

So….why do we deny the existence of God? There are many reasons:

We believe that our understanding is complete.

We believe that the body of knowledge that we call science is complete.

It’s easier to go along with the secular humanists than to argue with them.

The secular humanists will call us names: naive, superstitious, “little people”, fools, childish, judgemental……and we don’t like being called names.

We find the Bible, God, to be restrictive.

The Bible is old fashioned, out of date. Today we are much smarter than the old guys who wrote it. The old rules…….some would say the old truths……..just aren’t relevant in our modern culture.

We simply cannot abide a God who would send Aunt Thelma to hell…….a God who could send me to hell.

In a word……..God interferes with our pursuit of our appetites.

So, at best, we avoid the fight. We go along with the culture rather than going along with God. We take the path of least resistance. At worst, we attack those who worship God and actively sell the scientific, Darwinian, story of how we got here.

It’s an easy habit to fall into. It is in our nature to examine critically those ideas that we don’t like…….ideas that interfere with our wants and needs. It is in our nature to casually accept those ideas that we like…….ideas that free us to do what we want. This is true for both sides of the God/science argument. The secular humanist spends a lot of time tearing apart the creation story in the Bible. The creationist spends a lot of time attacking the scientific explanation. But, if you are honest, you must critically examine both arguments. If you really want the truth, you must be just as hard on the scientist/Darwinist as you are on the Christian.

Stay tuned……….next week the scientist goes under the magnifying glass.

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible .”

Jesus, NIV

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Solomon, NIV

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man.” (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)

Lincoln

Or cat…….. sorry…….. I’m a dog kind of guy.

If you don’t live with an animal, this post may go right past you.

I was sitting in front of the fire one morning, petting my dog……a Labrador…….. arguably the best breed on the planet. I realized that in addition to feeding and sheltering him, I shower him with affection. I never punish him or yell at him. The fact that he is extremely well behaved helps. Then I realized that he treats me exactly the same way. Our relationship is a two way sharing of love. I take care of him……because I love him. He does what I ask of him ……..because he loves me. There is no other “currency” involved in our relationship.

OK……maybe the occasional doggie treat?

This is the relationship that God expects between all human beings. It is the relationship that God expects between us…….and him. Needless to say, we fall short…….on both counts. No surprise there, we fail to meet God’s expectations…….every day.

I try to imagine a world that operates on that basis……a world where every act, every decision is based on love for the other guy…….in short, a world that operates as God originally intended. The first thing that comes to mind is all of the changes that everybody else will need to make. The next thought is “that will never happen!”

Then I recall a rule that I always tried to impress on my sons:

“When trying to solve a problem…… focus on the part of the problem that you can change.”

In this case, that would be ME learning to treat those around me with love…….all day…… every day.

It just happens that I watched the movie “Mr. Rogers” the night before. And I realize that Mr. Rogers came close.

We all have role models. But I bet that very few of us would choose Mr. Rogers………. Dirty Harry maybe…….Arnold maybe……. but not, Mr. Rogers.

And in that, we have missed the boat as a culture, and as a society.

If I could build my ideal man, it would be a man with the physical capabilities of the Terminator but with the sensibilities of Mr. Rogers……..a guy a whole lot like Jesus. So, going back to my rule, I cannot change to develop the physical capabilities of the Terminator………. but I can nurture the sensibilities of Mr. Rogers.

I once read this somewhere:

“I hope to someday grow into the kind of man that my dog thinks I am.”

So, if I want to make things better in this broken society, I will need to base every interaction I have on loving the other guy. Of course I will fail……..but maybe I can get closer to it tomorrow than I was yesterday.

I need to treat my fellow man…………….as well as I treat my dog.

And that………is the very heart of Christianity.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Paul, NIV

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Jesus, NIV

I recently watched “Bruce Almighty”, for the second or third time. For those who don’t know, the premise is that a guy named Bruce gets to be God for a few days. The movie is a comedy with Morgan Freeman as God and Jim Carey as Bruce. I’m sure that there are those who will object to some parts of the movie. Certainly, using God as a punch line is problematic.

Bruce, needless to say does not have the skill set that being God requires. Furthermore he begins as a shallow, self focused jerk. He has no real interest in the needs of others. He uses the power that has been given to him to advance his own needs and desires.

And it all goes south. I asked myself why does power work for God but not for Bruce? The answer is fairly straightforward. God uses his power for the benefit of his people. Bruce uses God’s power for the benefit of Bruce. This theme turns up in the Bible over and over…….the idea of the servant King. It is summed up best when Jesus washes the apostle’s feet. I have often said that the surest path to true joy……..is to love and care for others. This is the first lesson of “Bruce Almighty”……….taught by Bruce’s bad example and by his failure.

As Bruce learns and grows, the movie makes a second point, that, in my opinion, is one of the best theological statements that I have ever run across.

At the very bottom of his failure, Bruce cries out to God and asks (I’m paraphrasing)…….

“How do you give someone free will……..and make them love. you?”

God looks back, with pain in his eyes, and says,

“Welcome to my world.”

God doesn’t now and never has forced us to love him.

God loves us. He wants us to be happy. Because he created us, he knows how we work. He knows that the surest path to our own happiness is to love and serve others……and that begins with loving and serving him. By giving us free will, he guarantees that our gift of love to him is real. It is sincere. It means something.

God is not on some eternal cosmic ego trip. If that was the case, he could have skipped the free will part and built us as robotic worship machines. Instead God wants us to be happy…….and the road to that happiness is relationship. He wants a relationship with us that is based on love, freely given by us………just as his love is freely given to us.

Until you understand God, as a servant leader……..willing to go as far as death on a cross in order to have a relationship with you………you will never “get it”. You will never find true love and peace. You will never find the happiness that God intended for you when he created you…….the deep abiding joy that is and always has been your destiny.

And that is the theology of “Bruce Almighty”.

Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!

Paul, NIV

“Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all .”

Jesus, NIV

“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus, NIV

Imagine two couples. One couple is retired and lives on a farm miles from their nearest neighbor. They have a well and a garden. The other couple is a doctor and a nurse in a big city. They are working to save lives every day in tough circumstances.

There is no right or wrong here. Each couple is in the place where life has taken them. The farmers find themselves in a place where they have some control over their environment. They can close the gate. They can largely decide who comes and goes. The doctor and nurse have much less control over their environment. They can stay 6 feet from others, wear a mask, wash their hands…..a lot. But, they must go out among the crowd……they are far more exposed than the farmers.

Along comes the corona virus. It is an invisible, silent killer. It moves through our population unseen, sickening many and killing some. We have no natural defense, no personal immunity, no “herd immunity”. If we contract Covid-19, it will run a very predictable and sometimes lethal course. The only defense that we have is to never be be exposed to the virus………or at least to delay our exposure until treatments catch up with the disease.

Because of the situations that they find themselves in, the farmers have a much better chance of getting through the pandemic unscathed than the doctor and the nurse.

So……..what does this have to do with Christianity?

It turns out that there is another invisible silent killer among us. This one, instead of killing our body, kills our soul……..and this is far worse. We have a lot of symbols and a lot of names for this killer. Many, if not most of us, studiously ignore or even deny his existence. But, in our heart we sense the presence of evil in our world. Forget the guy in the red suit…….forget all of the names you have heard. I will call him Evil. And if you don’t believe that Evil is out there………you just aren’t paying attention.

The farmers have the best defense against the Corona virus that can be had. They aren’t naive, but they are confident that they can survive the pandemic. The doctor and nurse are good noble people and we all owe them a profound debt of gratitude. But, they move among the virus all day every day…….they do their job, but they know that their defenses are weak. If they aren’t scared…….they aren’t paying attention.

The parallels between the Corona virus and Evil are obvious. If you want your soul to survive this life, you must isolate yourself from Evil, because he is very hard to defeat once he is in your heart. Something to think about the next time you turn on the TV to entertain yourself by watching people kill each other.

Jesus gives us the tools to isolate ourselves from Evil.

Love God….. Love your neighbor.

And that is Christianity in one line.

And the LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

God, NIV

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm to the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

Peter, NIV

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Paul, NIV