Can we just cancel this week?

I wanted to just cancel last week altogether.  Ice storms.  Problems for my husband at work with a business trip to ice the cake.  Behind on the housework.  Again.  The dogs chewed on the back cushion of the love seat I practically mortgaged the house to pay to re-cover because everyone loves it and I have to live with them.  It was Thursday and I woke up at 5:48 that morning and felt confused.  Why was I where I was?  For some reason my brain expected to wake up in a luxurious suite and that I had won that $1.6 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) lotto jackpot.  Instead I woke up in my own bed with the flannel sheets that have goofy looking owls on them which I bought because they were the least obnoxious pattern available from the selection on sale at Walmart.  So, as I stared at the alarm clock on my dusty night stand with the door that won’t stay closed because the air in my house is dry beyond words because the furnace humidifier died last year and won’t be replace for another month, I had to have a discussion with my brain about reality vs. unreality.  Unfortunately, I won the argument.

Let’s talk about what that argument is really about.  It’s really about happiness.  Would I prefer to wake up in a California king-sized bed with matching bedding or my goofy owl sheets with an old cotton sheet thrown over the duvet because our cat, Demon-Spawn, insists on jumping up on the bed to throw up where it’s comfortable?  I don’t think I have to answer that question, especially if the king-sized bed scenario includes room service.

We all want to be happy, but I think we confuse happiness with two greater attributes which will bring us happiness.  I am referring to contentment and trust.  Some of you may have read my 4-part blog on free will and predestination.  I did not realize what a watershed moment in my life that it described.  I had finally figured out things that had been niggling at the back of my mind for literally decades.  I am still seeing new concepts open up to me because those ideas congealed.  Even though I woke up confused this morning (and not particularly content or happy as a result), there are things which I know and once those begin to settle in, life improves.

The New and Improved Covenant

I was raised with the teaching that God made man as a perfect being, placed him in a perfect world and then had to come up with a way to deal with man’s fall into sin.  I was taught that God thought up a plan to rescue man – the death of Yeshua on the cross – so that man could return to the relationship he had with God in the Garden of Eden.  A suspicion that this teaching is incorrect has been growing on me and now I no longer believe it.  No, I have not lost my faith.  I simply believe that those who taught and believe these things missed the point.  God is bigger than this and his priorities are bigger too.

God did not create the world and mankind because he was bored one day in heaven.  He did not create everything because he needed something to do and a world full of trouble would help him pass the time.  Everything God does is for his glory.  HIS glory.  Not ours.  Everything he does reflects back on who he is.  Not because he is an ego maniac.  In simplest terms, it is for his glory because it is an accurate statement of what existence is.  Nothing increases his glory, and nothing can diminish it.  God’s creation of everything that exists is a demonstration of his glory.  Creation states a fact by its existence and demonstrates the attributes of God in a way which words alone cannot do.

When Theology Walks the Earth

I love reading theology.  It’s better than anything else in the world.  But I have to keep reminding myself that as abstract as the discussions get, I am discussing something concrete.  In fact, the most concrete thing in all of existence.  There is nothing more concrete than God.  Which is odd, because we know he is a spirt.

There is something in man that longs to touch God, which is probably why the worship of idols is so entwined with the history of mankind.  You can’t touch or see a spirit but you can touch and see an idol.  You can pick it up and take it with you anywhere you go.  The original ‘God in a Box’.  God-to-go.  I think what we forget is how much God longs to touch us.  That’s what the rabbis didn’t take into account.  That’s why there was no room in their theology for Yeshua.  Here was God, looking like they looked, reaching out to touch them.  They were prepared for the God of Sinai, descending in cloud and flame.  They were totally unprepared for the God who came to Elijah, not in the wind or the earthquake but as a quiet whisper.  Yeshua was God whispering to us because Sinai is too overwhelming.  Sinai frightens us and causes us to run from God.  Elijah did not run from the whisper.  The whisper made Elijah realize how human he was.  I think he wept when he wrapped his mantle around his face.

This is a constant tension in religion.  God, the creator of the universe, a spirit enthroned in light above the heavens.  God, the creator of the universe, a man touching the leper, his dirty feet washed by the tears of a scandalous woman, his heart broken by the hardness of those who should have welcomed him.  Who is God?  How can these two total opposites be true?

But it was there all along.  God the Spirit creating man and then coming down in the cool of the evening to walk with the two creatures he had made like himself.  Not just like himself in their reasoning ability or their souls but in their physicality.  Because God, when he walked with them, took on flesh and bone.

And that is the purpose of theology.  It should cause us to stand slack-jawed in amazement that we have a God so big that both can be true.  We need the abstract discussions but we need to remember he is a person.  He will walk among us again.  Theology will touch us, laugh with us and still be beyond our ability to describe.

Are you living in the Matrix?

 

Physicists are theorizing that we actually exist within a computer simulation.  Do we exist within a computer simulation like the Matrix?  The question may actually be backward.  Is reality explaining simulations to us or are our simulations exposing our misunderstanding of reality?  Or both?

I don’t believe we exist within a computer simulation.  I do believe we exist in the mind of God.  Stop rolling your eyes.  Call him the Programmer if that makes you happier.  If that is the case, then everything we are learning about reality as a simulation makes sense.

The Argument Against Polytheism – Part 3

All right, so we’ve established that the character of God stands in stark contrast to our character and the character of the polytheistic gods.  But what does this mean?  Is it important?  The answer, of course, is yes.  God’s holiness and purity is linked to his power.  It is part of his essence.  If we want to talk about God and describe who and what he is, we have to include holiness and power.  Yet even that does not begin to contain God in words.  He is infinitely more that those two words can hold.

If the reason the polytheistic gods and mankind feel so comfortable together is that we are more similar than different, then let’s apply that to holiness and power.  We are not holy.  If they are impersonating God, then they are not holy.  We are limited in our abilities.  Are they?  Well, if God is who he says he is and they are what he claims they are (rebellious servants) then let’s look for an example in which the power of God and the polytheistic gods is compared.  And the classic example comes to mind.  Yup.  Moses at the court of Pharaoh.

The Argument Against Polytheism Part 1

It is said that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him.  This speaks to the need or desire for something greater than ourselves.  It is the reason agnostics and atheists give for dismissing the idea of God.  After all, if we can create God, then God is a myth.   But it is a telling statement.  What kind of god would a world create?  A god in its own image  That’s the material we have to work with – ourselves.  But that brings up another problem.  We see the image of the world every day in the news and it’s not good.  It’s not something we aspire to.  We want something more and better that what we are capable of.  What does this tell us?  We must look for a god who is not the image of the world or he would not be a god worth having.  Why?  Are we all powerful or at the very least powerful enough or good enough to make the world become what it should be?  Uh.  No.  Then a god worth following must be a god in his own image – separate and distinct from our image.  Comparing him to us must show a sharp contrast, not a blurry familiarity.

The problem is that the polytheistic religions we see in the world show us gods that have a blurry familiarity.  Some of them were just badly behaved.  Zeus was a serial adulterer.  Sekhmet was a mass murderess who had to be tricked into drinking beer dyed red which she thought was blood.  She got dead drunk and passed out and that’s how the Egyptians ended her killing spree.  Turn on the news.  It looks unfortunately familiar.  The Chinese often simply took humans and turned them into gods.  Again, blurry familiarity.  Most of these polytheistic gods only differed from humans in that they were immortal.  So if you’re looking for an example to aspire to, polytheistic religions may not be the best choice.

I’m learning to love having a rough time. Maybe.

I’ve had a couple of rough weeks.  Yes, the normal annoyances.  A bathroom with bad grout that should have been fixed a few years ago but has been held together with duct tape and superglue.  I love my contractor but trying to get him to call me has been frustrating.  The dryer is squealing loud enough to raise the dead.  My ancient and creaky dog is having more and more difficulties getting in and out of the house.  Fortunately, no accidents IN the house.  For now.  But what has really discouraged me is two people I care deeply about have walked away from the faith into faiths that make no sense to me at all.  Allow that to be an explanation for some of the posts that are coming because writing about why I believe what I believe in comparison to the paths they have chosen helps me to remember why I believe what I believe.

God has been impressing me with a few things through this.  One of these things is that the coming of Yeshua was a sea change in the way we relate to God.  Have you ever heard the term ‘sea change’?  I love it.  Google defines it as “a profound or notable transformation”.  And that’s what Yeshua was.  A mind-blowing sea change.  I’m still coming to terms with the immensity of this.  A 180 degree change in direction doesn’t even come close to describing it and a 360 degree change only brings us back to where we were so that won’t do either.  The other point God has been driving home is that sin is a problem but it is only the physical expression of the real problem.  It’s the symptom to the sickness.  Kind of like red spots and measles.  You see the spots and you know that you have the measles.  So what is sin the symptom of?  Pride.  Rebellion.  The idolatry of making yourself greater than God and in a position to dictate to him.  So let’s talk.