Can you imagine this:

You are in Washington, D.C. You walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and stoll into the white house. You walk into the oval office, sit down in President Biden’s chair……and make yourself at home.

How’s that for equality?

It is also unthinkable……absurd……impossible. Even if you could pull it off…….it would just be wrong.

The simple fact is that we live in a two (or more) tiered society. And we are OK with that. We recognize that there is a hierarchy…….that the hierarchy is essential to the function of our world. We recognize that when a large group of people ignore, defy, or even attack the hierarchy…….chaos ensues. Sometimes, out of the chaos, a new and better hierarchy arises. But, society cannot exist without a hierarchy. Society without hierarchy is anarchy. And there are organized groups in our society who want just that. Portland, Oregon……and many of our other cities are victims of this anarchy. They are emblematic of what happens to a society when the hierarchy fails.

We call this “the rule of law”. And the vast majority of us accept and follow the rules set up by the hierarchy……even when we disagree with them…….because we know that, taken as a whole, the rules of the hierarchy are essential to our well being.

Where we come into conflict is the extent of the hierarchy. Who is at the top of the pyramid?

Mom and Dad……the Mayor……the Governor……the President……….God.

We accept the reality of the hierarchy. But, what if our focus is too narrow? I propose that the true and most essential hierarchy is two tiered. The most essential hierarchy is not the multiple levels of human government.

The most essential hierarchy is the physical world and the spiritual realm. The consequence of defying, ignoring or attacking this hierarchy is the same as with our earthly hierarchy………..chaos. And it is hard to argue that the chaos in our world is not increasing. The chaos in our world is a direct result of the widespread denial of the spiritual realm…….of our creator, God……..of his two essential rules…….Love God and love your fellow man.

So……there is your choice…….our choice as a society:

Deny the spiritual realm……and enjoy chaos

Or

Accept the spiritual realm and our creator……and enjoy love.

“”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus……explaining Christianity in 3 sentences.
Matthew 22: 37-39, ESV

“What we have here…….is a failure to communicate.”

A line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”

Last week, I sent out about a dozen text messages, several dozen emails, and left about 4 messages in voice mail boxes. This was a pretty typical week. Your week was probably similar. Technology has made it very easy to send information to another person. But, I am beginning to wonder…….has technology improved our ability to communicate? You see, half of those messages did not garner a reply. Half of my messages were not even acknowledged. Now, it’s true that sometimes a message does not require a reply. But, I don’t know for sure that the messages that I sent were even received.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a pity party. I don’t respond to every message. I certainly feel no compunction to respond to commercials masquerading as texts, voicemail, and email. But, I am going to try to be better with non-commercial messages. A message from another person…..sent to me should at least be acknowledged.

And that brings me to the point of this post.

I believe that God is far more involved in the details of our daily lives than we suspect. God probably intervenes in our lives many times a day. Sometimes, this is direct. Sometimes, he gives someone else a little nudge to do or not do something to us or for us. I can recall several incidents where I felt a little nudge to do something that was unusual…..something that was way outside of my typical behavior. Sometimes I act on the nudge……sometimes I ignore it. In either case, I believe that these acts were prompted by God. These tiny, subtle interventions are, in effect, communications from our creator.

My point is that daily, God sends us a message, a little nudge, perhaps even a gift, or maybe he spares us from a disaster. And it is like the texts that I sent last week.

I suspect that most of the time, when God reaches out to us…… he doesn’t get a reply. Most of the time, when God reaches out to us……..we don’t even acknowledge him.

Maybe God deserves a reply…….Maybe God wants an acknowledgement………instead of “a failure to communicate”.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Jesus, Matthew 25:31-40, ESV

Success, Failure….and Sin

Years ago there was a weekly sports show. It began with a video clip of an athlete succeding and another athlete failing…..spectacularly. We live every day with success and failure. Typically we set a goal, work toward it, and we either achieve it…..or not. We succeed or we fail. By the time we get to work in the morning, we have succeeded or failed a dozen or so times: shower, leave the house, find a parking spot, arrive on time, etc. These are small successes. There are bigger goals…..bigger successes and failures: graduate college, find a mate, raise a family, retire, etc. Today, I want to focus on success/failure on an even larger scale.

Globally……is your life a success?

Taken as a whole, has your life achieved its goal?

I always told my sons, “the first step in solving a problem is to accurately identify the problem”. The first step in measuring the success of your life is to accurately identify your goal. If your life was a business, this would be your “mission statement”.

So, as a human being, what is your goal in life……your mission statement? I’ll give you a clue. If you can’t clearly state it in one sentence…..in the next three seconds…….you don’t have one. And if you don’t have a goal for your life, your life is going to be a failure…….even if you drive a Ferrari. This is why we have mid-life crises. This is why we lie on our death bed with regrets.

This is the great failure of secular humanism. SH has a great many short and medium term goals……many of them noble. What it lacks is a cohesive, global, achievable, long term goal……a goal that applies to every last one of us. The increasing conflict and craziness in our world grows out of us all pursuing conflicting personal goals. We abort our children……we bomb abortion clinics. We go to war.

Christianity is different. Christianity offers a unifying goal that applies to every one of us:

Draw closer to our creator……God.

How’s that for a mission statement?

Which brings me to the flip side of today’s post:

What is failure?

Failure, writ large, is like the guy on the ski jump. We set a goal and fail to reach it. Small goals lead to small failures. Medium size goals lead to medium size failures.

Global failures lead to failed lives.

If my goal is to draw closer to God, then anything that I say, do, or even think that doesn’t achieve that goal is a failure……..and it happens every day.

And failure to draw close to my creator is a very good working definition……..of sin.

For the Christian, the opposite of success……..is sin.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, advice to a young demon

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Jesus, Mathew 6:33, ESV

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you

Isaiah, 59:2, ESV

Today’s post is both for those who do not believe in a creator……..in God……..and for defenders of the creator. Because creation……bringing the universe out of nothing……bringing life out of nothing……is the defining act of God. Creator and God are synonymous.

Today I will focus on “how did life begin?”……..but the same argument applies to “how did the universe begin?”

Once I met a committed secular humanist. She asked, “do you actually believe in creation in seven days?” I said yes…….and she laughed. The encounter has caused me to spend years exploring my beliefs on creation……my “creation story”. The question that she asked was terribly effective……..secular humanists use it frequently…….because they find my “creation story”……..they would call it a “creation myth”…..to be laughable. And as Christians………we are intimidated………we are silenced. And that is the entire point of the question.

The secular humanist begins with the requirements that any explanation for the beginning of life must occur in a closed system and cannot rely on an outside intelligence or any phenomenon that current science cannot explain. Using those ground rules, the secular humanist tells us that intelligent design is laughably impossible.

Today I want to turn the tables……to ask the hard questions of the secular humanist. My first question is: “how did life begin?” The usual answer is one of the following:

Lightning struck a puddle of “primordial ooze” (simple, non-living molecules) causing them to come to life. Those simple molecules then assembled themselves into mRNA which then reproduced and generated proteins which then assembled themselves into living cells and reproduced.

Or

Primordial ooze coalesced into blobs which then assembled a surrounding membrane to become protocells which then became alive and reproduced.

The problem is that there is not a whiff of hard evidence that any of these things ever actually happened…….or that they are even possible. Even with the intervention of a scientist in a white lab coat (read…..intelligent creator), these explanations cannot be reproduced in a laboratory setting. Generations of scientists have tried.

And that brings me to the second question for the secular humanist:

Absent any proof that any of these things has ever happened…….absent any proof that any of these things is even possible……..why do you believe them?

The secular humanist will often reply with a barrage of interlocking theories, many of which do have merit…..but many of which rely on other unprovable theories and assumptions. This is a “primordial soup” of circular logic. When push comes to shove, if you throw out all of the unproven theories and assumptions, the hard evidence for the beginning of life out of non-living material simply does not exist.

If we are being honest. The “scientific” explanation for the origin of life is no more plausible than intelligent design.

There is only one honest answer to question number two.

The secular humanist believes in the “scientific” explanation of the origin of life……..because it has to be true. Because if it isn’t true their entire belief system fails.

So…….given two unproveable creation stories……..what drives the choice between them?

We tend to believe the ideas that serve us.

Secular humanism puts man at the top of the pyramid….we are in charge and can do as we please with impunity. The secular humanist wants power and control. Most of all……he wants to be in charge.

Intelligent design puts a creator who has expectations of us at the top. We are rewarded for meeting his expectations. We are punished when we fail. God is in charge……not man. Most of all…….the Christian wants eternity in paradise.

And what is God’s expectation?

Only that we recognize him and love him.

The choice, in the end, is a choice between living under external expectations……..that serve God…….and creating our own expectations…….that serve us.

And that is the way to answer……..when someone asks you about your belief in intelligent design.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Paul, Hebrews 11:6, ESV

in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self………lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Paul, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV