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

My wife and I are old. We are the people most at risk of death from the Corona virus. To top it off, two of my three sons died as young men. My father died when I was a teen. My wife’s father died when she was a teen.

Most people go through life with the mistaken belief that the really horrible things in life always happen to other people. My wife and I don’t have that luxury. So, as we watch the Corona virus spread, we are looking death in the eye. It is not my intention to go for sympathy here. It is not my intention to get morose. Because, the simple fact is that ALL of us are facing death. For my wife and me………it is just much more immediate…….more tangible.

If you are young, you still hold on to the myth of your immortality, your invulnerability. The world is your oyster. The pandemic is an invitation for you to explore these assumptions……….because you are just as mortal as I am.

So the question for today……..the question for you specifically…… is this:

“When you look at death…….your own death……..what do you see?”

Skip over the technical details. Will it be fast or slow? Will I see it coming? Will I suffer? These things are transient. Ultimately, these details are unimportant.

The real question is ………..”When I die…….what next?”

If you are a secular humanist or an atheist, then the honest answer is nothing. When you die, the complex biochemistry that runs your brain will stop. The lights will go out. Then nothing…… Black nothing.

If you practice one of the many forms of “designer religion”……..that is, a belief system that you have figured out on your own: “the goddess within”, “nature is my God”, “I’m going someplace beautiful!”, “I’m a good person”…….. then either you alone have figured out the greatest secret of the cosmos, or you are wrong. Realistically……you are wrong.

If you accept one of the 3 dominant faiths on the planet……. Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. Then you look forward to paradise…….provided that you meet some conditions.

I believe that there is enough solid eyewitness testimony of the resurrection of Jesus to prove that he is supernatural.

So when I die, what comes next for me is eternity…………spent with a guy who taught two fundamental rules: love God and love your neighbor.

In a word……when I die, things get better……..a whole lot better.

Does your belief system give you that hope?

“You believe in God believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Jesus, NIV

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus, NIV

This post is intended for adults and is not suitable for children.

We were created as sexual beings. Sex is a critical feature of who and what we are. Physically, it is determined at conception and it influences us every day, possibly every minute of our lives. We can try to ignore or deny it. We can try to manipulate it. We can enjoy it………or we can go to war over it. We can use it as it was intended……..or we can abuse it.

The division of humankind into men and women happened very early. It was clearly a key part of God’s plan. The sexes are physically distinct……they are functionally distinct……..but they are also emotionally and psychologically distinct. “Men are from Mars….. Women are from Venus”. We compliment each other. Each sex fills a giant void in the other. In a word, we strengthen each other. A well matched man and woman are stronger than 2 well matched men or 2 well matched women. It is not my intention to dive into the entire LGBT argument today……..it is far too big of a conversation and I will come back to it someday……maybe when I’m a little stronger and smarter.

Today, I want to address sex globally. The Bible spends a great deal of ink on the subject of sex. Sex and money are arguably the most commonly discussed topics in the Bible. Sex is clearly very important to God. He could very easily have created us as asexual beings. When we needed or wanted a child, we could just “bud” one off of our back, like a Hydra. Simple, effective, no social complications, no STDs to worry about. There would be no sexual harassment, no gender wage gap, no glass ceiling. So……why sex? You could say that it’s important to keep the gene pool stirred up. But, I believe that God made sex, the mandatory blending of two unlike people, because he knew it would strengthen us and because he knew that we would be happier that way.

Sex is designed to grow our society, but also to improve the quality of our individual lives. Sex is a tool……..an extremely powerful tool.

I’m a woodworker, I have a shop full of tools, just ask my wife. Some are simple and limited……..like my screwdriver. Others are extremely powerful…….like my tablesaw. As a general rule, the more powerful the tool is, the more dangerous it is. I will never cut off a hand with my screwdriver; but, I could do it in a heartbeat with my tablesaw. So…….there are rules. The rules are there to make my work more effective, to make it more enjoyable, but, primarily, to protect me from my tools. The more powerful the tool, the more numerous the rules. The more powerful the tool, the more restrictive the rules. The more powerful the tool the more horrific the consequences of breaking the rules. The rules are not arbitrary. The rules arise from the nature of the tool. I cannot negotiate with them. I cannot redefine my way around them. If I ignore a rule, because I don’t like it, that changes nothing. The consequences don’t go away.

There are rules in the Bible that cover the use of the tool that is sex. There are actually quite a few. The key one, however, can be summed up in one line:

Sex rule #1: Sex is for husbands and wives.

Anything outside of this is recreational sex…….and recreational sex…….while it is great fun……… is dangerous. Sex rule #1 is there to protect you from the dangers of recreational sex. It is not there to ruin your fun. It is a loving father trying to save you from pain.

So………if you:

Run a board into the table saw from the wrong side> kickback> your hand getting pulled into the blade> amputation> trying to get by with a stump instead of a hand for the rest of your life.

Engage in recreational sex> unwanted pregnancy> abortion> killing your daughter…….. possibly the only child you will ever have.

Sex rule #1: Sex is for husbands and wives.

An annoying rule……..it will keep you from having some fun……it will also keep you from getting herpes or aids……..it will also keep you from having to decide someday whether or not to kill your child.

I’m 66 years old…….you will have to trust me on this…….if you restrict sex to your husband or your wife………when you are older than dirt and look back, you will have missed out on nothing.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Moses, NIV

“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman .” But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

Paul, NIV

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Paul, NIV

The ten commandments are a good solid moral code. In fact, they are accepted by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. This makes them the most widely accepted moral code on the planet. No other moral code even comes close. Even if you are an atheist, they are the best guide for living that you could choose.

Today, I’m going to focus on one of them:

Do not lie.

Pretty basic. Don’t say something that is not true. Don’t say you paid the rent……..if you didn’t.

The trouble is that there are some gray areas around the edges.

The “little white lie”……… It’s little, not a matter of importance. It’s white, it doesn’t harm anybody. So what’s the big deal?
There was an ad on TV where Abraham Lincoln’s wife asks the ageless question, “does this dress make me look fat?” He tells the truth………and suffers the consequences. The little white lie typically doesn’t harm the other guy. It can, however, harm you. You risk losing the other guy’s trust. You risk easing into bigger, less white, lies. Better to say nothing at all or diplomatically tell the truth. But, the little white lie is not the main thrust of today’s post.

The question of the day is this:

Is it a lie, if I ignore something that is true? …..a truth that is inconvenient because it interferes with me getting what I want…….a truth that could cost me something valuable, if I acknowledge it.

Is it a lie if a Republican ignores the damage that guns do in our society or the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy?

Is it a lie if a Democrat ignores the 3000 children killed every day by abortion or the legitimate right of a law abiding citizen to own a gun?

What is the purpose of the truth and why is it so important that God included it in a fairly short list of rules? Truth operates in two realms. Internally and externally. Internal truth is the set of ideas that guide our every step. If you allow yourself to believe things that are not true, you will make bad decisions and you will do things that are wrong. Ultimately this is self destructive. Internal truth guides us to live a life of integrity. External truth is the things that we say and do in public. It governs how we interact with others. If we are to live among other people, they need to be able to rely on what we say. If we violate the truth often enough, others will lose trust in us. This makes us ineffective……even if we are telling the truth……..this time. Truth is important…….because without it, we cannot make good decisions, we cannot communicate with one another, and we can’t reach a consensus and move forward as a society.

The debates around gun control and abortion rage on. Why?

I believe that ignoring a truth that you don’t like is the same as lying. The debates over gun control and abortion rage on because both sides are lying by ignoring truths that are inconvenient to them and their appetites.

God gives us the ten commandments because he knows that we need them. They are not there to ruin our fun. They are designed to protect us…….. from others……..but more importantly from ourselves.

So we need to have the courage to face all of the truths that are out there………even the ones that restrict us……..even the ones that interfere with our appetites.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus, NIV

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Paul, NIV

We hear a lot of stuff every day. In an election year this is especially true. Much of what we hear appeals to our emotions. Much of what we hear appeals to our desires. Modern marketing has turned this into a science………the science of manipulation.

When we encounter a piece of information, we often ask questions.

What will this cost me?
Can I profit from this?
Does this make me happy, sad, angry?
What will my friends say?
Does this mean I’ve done something bad……..or good?
What are the implications for my future?

In a word…………how will this affect me…….and my family?

These are good questions. But, they are not the first question that we should ask. The first question should be….is this true? Because, if it’s not true…….the other questions are irrelevant. It is shocking how easily those who would manipulate us manage to slip a piece of information past that first essential question.
Just today, I saw a post, that was put up by a friend of mine. The post compared conservatives to Nazis. I am generally conservative. I zoomed straight into angry mode………without ever asking the question, “is it true that I am like a Nazi?” In case you have any doubt…..I am not a Nazi……..and neither are you. The post was manipulative and it was untrue. It required no further analysis.

But that doesn’t seem to matter today.

We live in a world where truth has lost its importance. Our culture places more value on the question, “will this get me what I want?” than on the question “is this true?” Years ago, in college, I had a friend who was studying, of all things, journalism. He wrote an article for the paper…….and the title line was grossly misleading. We called him out on it. He said that the purpose of the title was to get you to read the article. The fact that it was untrue was unimportant, as long as it accomplished his goal. Today we call this “clickbait”…….and you can’t pick up your phone without seeing it.

I see the world from a conservative perspective. But I still try to weigh every thing I hear against the standard of truth. Years ago I asked the question. “Is this whole God, eternity, heaven, hell thing true?” Because, if it’s true, whether I agree or approve is irrelevant.

Here is what I came up with:

The Bible says it is true.
Jesus says that the Bible is true.
If the death and resurrection of Jesus are true…….then Jesus is superhuman.
So, if Jesus is superhuman……that is…..if Jesus is God, then the entire God, eternity, heaven, hell thing is true.

So the critical question……..the most important question of your brief life……..considering the heaven, hell, eternity issue……is this:

Is the resurrection of Jesus true?………because, if it is, then the whole heaven, hell, God, eternity thing is also true.

Dozens of witnesses saw Jesus after the resurrection.
11 apostles died gruesome deaths rather than recant.

And that is good enough for me.

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

Luke, NIV

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus, NIV

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord ,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Paul, NIV

FYI……. This was written before the coronavirus outbreak.

I always told my kids. The first step in solving a problem is to accurately identify the problem. If you come up with a dozen brilliant solutions to a problem, but it’s not the real problem, you get nowhere.

Spoiler alert……. What follows is not going to make you happy. You may disagree, because you don’t like it. But it is the truth.

The planet is getting warmer………deal with it. The right says it’s a temporary anomaly……… I’ll believe that and I’ll buy you a beer…….a nice cold one……. when it cools back down.

All Gore tells us that it’s Global Warming caused by CO2. As much as I dislike the guy, I have to give him half credit here. His book “An Inconvenient Truth” is halfway right. The planet is getting warming……but the problem is not CO2.

If you look at an historical graph of global temperature, you can see that the curve is fairly flat until about 1950, give or take. From there on we have inexorably warmed up. Something changed in 1950……but what? Either there was a sudden change in some critical determinant of global temperature or we crossed a threshold.

I believe that we crossed a threshold. Al Gore says it was the CO2 level. I say that CO2 is just another symptom of the real problem.

The real problem is overpopulation. In 1950 the world population was 2.5 billion…….. today it is almost 8 billion. Let that sink in. In my lifetime the population of the planet has TRIPLED. Just look at the traffic on the interstate and you can see this for yourself. Yes, we eat more meat. Yes, we drive more cars. Yes, we produce more CO2 and methane. But, the root problem is not greenhouse gasses. The root problem is overpopulation. I used to worry that we would someday reach a population level that the planet could not feed. I now realize that we have already passed a population level at which the waste that we produce has overwhelmed the Earth’s ability to absorb it. We have poisoned the Earth……..with CO2, methane, fluorocarbons, plastics, antibiotics, pesticides, etc….and we crossed that threshold around 1950. Being environmentally sensitive is a good thing. But, do you really believe that putting a solar panel on your roof is going to solve the problem of a world population that triples every 50 years?

We need to stop wasting our time worrying about graphs that superimpose global temperature and CO2 levels and start worrying about graphs that superimpose global temperature and population.

The solution is fairly straightforward. We need to get back to a global population of about 2 billion. Unfortunately, we are not going to do it. We will spend enormous resources on projects that will grow the population rather than decrease it.

Oddly enough, the ecosystem of our planet is an amazing equilibrium and it will adjust……..it will ultimately fix global warming…….without our help. The Earth will fix global warming by itself……..not because of; but rather, in spite of, our best efforts……..in spite of the best efforts of science and technology.

Enter, overcrowding, antibiotic resitant “super bugs”, deadly viruses, and the dearth of new antibiotics…….the so called “post antibiotic era”. We are headed for a devastating worldwide pandemic. Every 5 or 10 years we have a near miss. And…… unfortunately…..this is not just inevitable………it is necessary ……..for the survival of the Earth…….and, ironically, for the survival of our species.

To put it another way, without a catastrophic pandemic, or something very much like one, the planet Earth and mankind are doomed.

This is nothing new, the black plague, and the Spanish Flue killed significant percentages of the population, in some areas up to 50%. The coming pandemic will need to be worse than that to solve the problem.

Read “The Stand” by Stephen King or “Rainbow 6” by Tom Clancy for a preview.

So for the secular humanist, you have one of two futures to look forward to on this planet:

Global Warming with all of its consequences including mass extinction, food and water shortages, mass migration, wars over resources, coastal flooding, drought in the northern plains, etc.

Or

Global pandemic…….. sort of a catastrophic biologic “reset”.

And that is the best that science and secular humanism have to offer. We will try hard to delay these bad outcomes……but with the global population exploding…….16 billion humans by 2050…… realistically, the consequences of global warming will likely accelerate rather that slow down.

But

The Bible offers a third possibility……a divine “reset”. The Bible teaches that this Earth will come to a catastrophic end and that each of us will move on to one of two “new worlds”……one pleasant…….the other…….not so much.

Of all of the available options………the pleasant world after the “divine reset” of the Bible………… paradise………. is by far the most appealing to me.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” 

John, NIV

I’m a woodworker. I build custom furniture that ranges from high end craft to art. Often a piece requires hundreds of operations. And sometimes………near the very end……..something goes wrong. Maybe I miscalculated. Maybe there was a defect in the wood that was buried until I cut my way down to it. Maybe a component just broke as I worked on it. Suddenly, I find myself looking at piece that I have put an enormous amount of effort into……and there is a flaw. Maybe it’s tiny………maybe it is catastrophic.

What do I do?

There really are only a few options. Repair the flaw, minimize it, or toss the whole thing into the fireplace and start all over. Sometimes, I leave the flaw and consider it a part of the character of the piece. I have done all of these things.

I am not surprised that God visited us as a carpenter. Jesus would have been very familiar with the flaw that shows up toward the end of the process of creating something. After an enormous amount of work, this thing that he was building is flawed. He would have had a similar set of options when he assessed his flawed creation……fix it, minimize it, ignore it, or burn it down and start all over.

There is another angle to God’s dilemma. When you build something beautiful and special, you become attached to it. It is very hard to destroy something that you are attached to……… something that you have put a lot of effort into. I have thrown pieces into the fire. But, that is rare. I reserve that for flaws that are truly catastrophic. More often, I work hard to salvage the piece. Often this takes a lot of effort, but I keep at it until I have a piece that I can send out of the shop with pride.

Surely, God must face this same decision………every day. This world, his creation, is seriously……. perhaps catastrophically flawed. Ironically, the flaw flows from his original design concept. Create man, give him free will, and let him build a relationship with you. But, we have taken free will……..and abused it. The result is a world of beauty, love, kindness, hate, murder, deceit and more.

What does God do?

Fix it? Take away our free will. God could dictate our choices for us and only allow us to do the things that are good. The problem is that we would become a society of automatons……pre-programmed to love God. And, you and I both know that you cannot force somebody to love you……. because, even if you could, the love would be meaningless. Love must be freely given……..by choice. We must freely choose to love God……. otherwise it is meaningless.

Burn it down and start all over? This is a very attractive option. Except for the fact that, in addition to wanting us to love him, God loves us……with a passion that we cannot even imagine. I believe that God’s love for us is so all encompassing that destroying us is an option that is just not on the table. I hope that I am right about this.

Minimize and Ignore it? Of all of God’s options, this one is the most improbable. But, thankfully, it is the one he has chosen. God leaves the flaw in place and through the sacrifice that he, Jesus, willingly choose to make, he ignores it. He even goes one step further. Once we have recognized and accepted his gift……his personal sacrifice………God minimizes our flaw until even he can no longer see it. It’s a win-win deal. We spend eternity in relationship with our creator……..which was, after all, what we were designed for. God enjoys his creation free from any perceptible flaws. The price that God paid to achieve this is hard to imagine.

And I am grateful.

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

David, NIV

Don’t worry………this post is not going to be a long detailed confessional. Just let me say that I have done things that I regret. Some were honest mistakes, some were disagreements, some were bursts of anger, and a few were just plain old fashioned evil. Like it or not, this is true for all of us.

We all do things that are wrong………..and sometimes we do things that are straight up evil.

Some of our misdeeds we justify. We decide that they were wrong…….but that they were worth it. Some of them we recategorize………we simply decide that they weren’t wrong after all. We are very good at this. We take something that is wrong, but that we really enjoy, want, or even need. We redefine it as OK ……and from them on we can enjoy it free from guilt. This, of course, is dishonest…….and the most destructive lie……is the one you tell yourself. There are those among us who have carried this to the point where just about anything that they want is OK. “If it feels good do it!” We call this hedonism.

But, for most of us, when we do something wrong, we know it’s wrong and we feel an unusual type of pain…….guilt. Guilt is not very popular in our culture. We are continually told that we should be tolerant……..and when you come down to it, guilt is just intolerance that we have turned inward. This attitude toward tolerance and guilt is something that our culture has gotten wrong. Tolerance can be a good thing…….but it can also be bad. It all depends on just exactly what it is that you are tolerating. Tolerating harmless annoyances from our neighbors is good. Tolerating Hitler in the 30’s was bad. It all depends on where the thing that you are tolerating is leading you.

Same story with guilt. Guilt can be good or bad……..depending on where it leads you. Guilt that leads you to abandon behavior that hurts others or yourself is good. Guilt that leads you to improve the way you treat others is good. Guilt that keeps you stuck in a bad place is bad. Guilt over something that you cannot undo and cannot learn and grow from is bad.

Good guilt is a gift from God. It causes you to examine the mistake that you have made, to learn from it and to grow. It can also lead you to make amends and help others heal.

So, if you are feeling guilty about something that you have done, you need to have a good hard look at the situation….perhaps share it with somebody wise. You must see if you can learn from it and grow, or help others to grow from it. If you can, then you are dealing with Godly guilt and you should pray about it and act on it. If you can’t learn from it, grow from it, or help others because if it, then you are dealing with destructive guilt…….confess it, then drop it and move on. Bad guilt has a way of dragging you down into more bad decisions.

Guilt is just like any other form of pain. If the pain causes you to pull your hand out of the fire, it is good. If the pain doesn’t cause you to act to improve the situation, then it is counterproductive.

For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

Paul, NIV

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you a free from the law of sin and death.

Paul, NIV