The cast is extensive. It includes all kinds of people: kings, lepers, rich men, poor widows, murderers…….you get the point.
As you look through the very real people who are described, whom do you think you are most like? More to the point……. whom would you choose as your role model?
My starting point is usually one of the heroes of the faith: Paul, Peter, Daniel, Joseph, Martha. I usually think of somebody righteous. They are often powerful, but, if not powerful, they are at least influential. They are usually famous.
But, the more I sift through all of the candidates, I run across a guy who is barely a footnote. He gets about four lines. We are not even told his name. We know next to nothing about his background.
He is theif number two. One of the guys crucified with Jesus. He admits his sin……that he is getting exactly what he deserves. He recognizes the divinity of Jesus. He asks for forgiveness……..a pardon that he does not deserve……that he has in no way earned. Jesus forgives him on the spot and promises him a place in paradise. Even more, he promises him that they will be together in paradise. They will have a relationship. The theif is given access to God……..as a friend. Simply by asking, his relationship with God is restored.
I choose the theif, because he is the poster child for the gap between where I am……….and where I am heading. He helps me to focus with crystal clarity on the magnitude of the gift that has been given to me…….the fact that no matter how great my failures, Jesus cares about me……. personally.
Humility…….not hubris.
As I move forward I will try to stay focused on where I stand………on who I am.
I am the theif.
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him,
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
A conversation between Jesus and two criminals, NIV
We all want it……. happiness. Yet consistently acquiring it is a fairly rare “life skill”.
When push comes to shove, we spend our time…….all day, every day……..working on this one simple goal. We usually don’t even realize it. We get so focused on the intermediate steps that we lose track of our destination. We fail to see the forest for the trees.
Ask 100 people what they are trying to accomplish…..right now. You will get a bunch of answers.
Get to work. Get a job. Clean the house. Find my keys. Pick up the kids. Get dinner ready. Pay the bills.
These are accurate. They are true. They are good goals.
But, they are not what we are really…… ultimately …….seeking.
They are intermediate steps that we work on in the hope that they will lead us to our real goal………to be happy. One of our greatest and perhaps saddest failures as human beings is that we can get so absorbed in the intermediate steps that we fail to notice that they are not taking us to our destination. We pursue our career, work 60 hours a week, buy a Lexus, move into a nice house, join the club. And we lose track of our family along the way. I know…….. because I have done this. Men are worse about this than women. Women are naturally more tuned into relationships than men. But, the women’s movement is working hard to teach women that the way to “succeed” is to be like men. Along the way women are learning to fail the same way men have.
We live in a society that tells us that self realisation should be out ultimate goal. We get called the “me generation”. We are told “if it feels good……do it.” Surprisingly, this approach is closer to the truth than we realize. We should be seeking happiness. That is what we are wired for. That is the way God built us.
Happiness is not the problem. Seeking it is not the problem. The problem is that we sit in front of our TV ……in front of our laptop…….and we listen to an endless stream of marketing geniuses and politicians telling us what we need to do to be happy. Did you ever notice that following their advice enriches THEM……..in their mistaken belief that selling you their product, their ideology, will lead THEM to happiness? There is some big league irony there.
Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we have lost our way. We have bought into Madison Avenue’s pitch…….. that the map to happiness is the accumulation of stuff……..that happiness is somehow connected to physical things.
Trust me…… accumulating stuff……will not make you happy. I have tried this too.
So, if my TV has mislead me about the path to my destination, happiness, what is the true route?
The true path to happiness predates your laptop……it even predates your TV. It is found in the New Testament. The path to happiness is love.
Love God Love your fellow man
If you reflect on the moments of greatest joy in your life, you will quickly realize that none of them involve getting what the guy on TV told you that you need. They will be the moments when you were loved. And even more so……..they will be the moments when you loved somebody. In your heart, you know this to be true……because God wrote this truth on your heart. It is as much a part of you as your eye color.
There is a true cause and effect relationship between love and joy.
LOVE CAUSES JOY
The fact is that this knowledge about love and joy……..written on your heart…….is one of the clearest indications of the existence of God. It is one of the best “proofs” of the truth of the Bible.
You can ignore it……..you can chase stuff. But the thing about the truth is that ignoring the truth ……denying the truth…….does not change the truth. Even worse, it does not change the consequences of walking down the wrong path………a path that cannot lead you to deep abiding joy.
“ ‘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.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments .”
Jesus, NIV
If I speak in the tongues a 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.
And yet this is something that I struggle with……just about every day.
You see, there is a lot of truth out there. Some of it serves me well. Some, in fact most of it, I like. But there is also a lot of truth out there that runs against my appetites. There is a lot of truth out there that interferes with me getting what I want…..and I don’t like that. Al Gore coined the term “an inconvenient truth”. He and I disagree on a lot of things; but, I think that this idea has merit.
An inconvenient truth is something that is true but that is in your way. It is true, but it keeps you from running your world the way you want to run it. I think that one of the greatest failings of mankind is the way that we deal with the inconvenient truths that we encounter every day.
Here are some examples:
Imagine a guy who shoots and hunts as a hobby. The truth is that a gun is a tool; but, it is a tool that destroys rather that builds.
Imagine a woman, embarking on a high powered career who finds herself pregnant. The truth is that an abortion will advance her career; but, it will kill her child.
Image a man on an exit ramp with a sign that says “hungry”. The truth is that he may be a professional panhandler or an addict; but, he could still use your help.
Imagine being confined to your home because of a virus that is running loose. You are bored and your family budget is shot; but, social distancing is the only tool you have to save lives.
All of these things are true.
Half of them are very inconvenient.
How do you…… How do I……. deal with the inconvenient truths that impede our lives every day? If what I see on Facebook is any indication……….we don’t deal with them very well. About a fourth of the posts that I see amount to somebody shouting a truth that promotes their agenda……..that gets them what they want. They deny or ignore the equally valid truth on the other side of the argument. Kellyann Conway used the term “alternate facts” to address this issue. She was pilloried for it by the press. But, just like Al Gore, she was on to something.
If you speak only your side of the truth and ignore the inconvenient truth on the other side……..then you are an idiot……..in the classical sense of the term. Don’t get offended……yet. “Idiot” comes from a Greek word that means “one’s own”. It accurately describes someone who promotes the truths that serve them, while ignoring the truths that work against them.
If you consistently deny or ignore half of the truth can you really call yourself……….can I really call myself…… an honest person.
I have often said that the most dangerous lies that you will ever tell………are the ones you tell yourself.
My challenge to all of us is this:
We need to roll back the rock and have a good hard look at the inconvenient truths that we have been hiding from. Maybe then we can have an honest conversation about the problems that we are facing.
I have to believe that fearlessly seeking the truth, whether or not it is convenient will lead us to a better society……..will lead us to love…….will lead us to freedom.
‘Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.’
God, NIV
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
Jesus, NIV
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.
Over the last two posts I have presented the arguments for why the explanation of an intelligent God as our creator and the scientific explanation of our creation by chance are both impossible.
And yet here we are.
The truth is that there is no bulletproof, well documented, scientifically verified explanation as to how we got here. We stand around and poke holes in the other guy’s belief system. We accept the “unprovable” parts of our own belief system with little critical analysis.
The Christian accepts the creation story in Genesis on faith. The secular humanist accepts the “big bang”, spontaneous generation of life, and Darwinian evolution on faith.
We do this because if the things that we accept on faith aren’t true, then our entire belief system fails apart. In point of fact Christianity and secular humanism are both religions. If you add in Judaism and Islam, the God of the old testament and secular humanism/science are by far the two dominant religions on the planet.
Given the choice of science vs. God, we like science because it gives us more leeway to do as we choose. Don’t like being a man? You can be a woman. Don’t like being pregnant, you can have an abortion. Don’t like being sad……take a pill. Don’t like being sick……. there’s euthanasia.
We believe the premises of secular humanism because they give us what we want……freedom. Freedom from God and his expectations…….freedom to live our lives as we choose.
Freedom to make our own decisions……..good and bad.
Science……..secular humanism………gives us ultimate power. God, on the other hand, reserves ultimate power to himself……and denies it to us.
And there it is…….we want the power……we want control. We want to be in charge.
God is not possible……… because we want to be God.
And there’s only room for one God.
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
Paul, NIV
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.”
God, NIV
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
By science, I mean the overarching explanations of how we got here.
There are four fundamental things that must be explained to answer the question: “how did we get here?”.
The origin of the universe.
The origin of a planet that could support life.
The origin of life.
The origin of the human race.
Cosmologists look at the essentially endless universe, billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars. They have determined that because of a measurable phenomenon called red shift that the universe is expanding. They conclude that if you track this expansion back to its beginning, that it was caused by a cataclysmic explosion which they call the ” big bang”. But they offer no explanation as to how the “big bang” came about, what caused it. There are some theories but there is no solid evidence to support them. We look further out into space each year, further back into time, but we never see back to the “big bang”. It is always just out of our reach. We reach a line where we cross a boundary between scientifically measurably observation…….and speculation. They have a name for this. They call it a singularity. A singularity is an event so disruptive that you cannot see past it. In a word, science has no explanation for the how and why of the “big bang”. Science has no explanation for what preceded the “big bang”. They don’t even try. Cosmologists begin with measurable evidence, they progress to speculation and theory, and then they just give up. Science fails to explain what caused the creation of the universe.
After the universe came into being, we need a planet that is capable of supporting life. It turns out that there are far more requirements than you might imagine.
A stable star with the right temperature and metal content. A planet of the right density with a stable nearly circular orbit just the right distance from the star. The planet must rotate and have a tilt and a molten core. It needs water, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen It needs to be dense enough to have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. There must be outer planets to vacuum up space debris. And many, many more.
We have found a few planets that meet some of these, but none that meet all of them. The probability that a given planet will meet all of the requirements is so low as to be essentially impossible. Some will say that with billions of stars out there, even an extremely low probably event could occur…… somewhere. Statistically, this is true; but it is dishonest. The correct question is not “could there be a habitable planet somewhere in the universe?”. The correct question is “what is the probability that our planet could become habitable….by chance?” An honest statistician will tell you that a guy tossing a coin a few light years away does not affect YOUR next coin toss. Science fails to yeild a reasonable probability that our earth would become habitable by chance.
Science says that life began when a collection of simple atoms bonded together, became complex molecules, assembled themselves into a cell (an extraordinarily complex biochemical factory), and that cell then became alive and reproduced…..all by accident. There is not a whiff of laboratory evidence that this occurred……or is even possible. Some simple molecules have been created in a lab setting. But these experiments all involved a guy in a white lab coat…….. an intelligent creator. Science fails to explain the origin of life by random accident.
After we get to a simple living cell, enter Darwin. Spontaneous mutation, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest turns the primitive cell into Angelina Jolie. She is the product of her DNA which contains about 400 billion chemical bonds…..each of them a random, sequential, cumulative, positively adaptive………. accident. There is not a single solid laboratory documented example of the creation of a new macro species. Antibiotic resistant microbes may be an example of micro evolution but you cannot honestly scale this up to Angelina Jolie. Science fails to explain Angelina Jolie.
These are four sequential explanations. First, you have to have an explosion. The explosion must create a habitable planet. Then, you have to have life that spontaneously springs up from non living building blocks. Then the primitive life form has to change into a modern human. All of this has to happen by random accident. Each of these events can be assigned a probability. That probability, for each event, is extraordinarily low, low enough to be practically impossible. Because they are mandatory and sequential, you have to multiply the four individual, essentially impossible, probabilities to arrive at the net final probability for all four. If you like math….. that comes out to impossible to the fourth power. Even worse, if any one of the four explanations is truly not possible, then the whole system fails.
I would argue that the final probability for the sum of all four of these individual events is so low as to qualify as impossible.
Science, if you assess it critically, fails to explain where we came from.
