Psalm 18:25-30

With the merciful you show yourself merciful;

with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;

with the purified you show yourself pure;

and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.

For you save a humble people,

but the haughty eyes you bring down.

For it is you who light my lamp,

the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

For by you I can run against a troop,

and by my God I can leap over a wall.

This God -- his way is perfect,

the word of the Lord proves true;

he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

(Psalm 18:25-30, ESV)

I love how it talks about God showing his qualities of mercy, blamelessness and purity to the merciful blameless and pure.  He just shows what he is.  

But to the crooked he makes himself seem tortuous.  Because he is not tortuous.  Yet, to those who spit in his face, he seems as though he is.

Also:  "...and by my God I can leap over a wall." 

How fantastic is that?

This God.  My God.

Selections from Zephaniah

I read Zephaniah today.  I enjoyed it more than I remembered.

I really liked this part, because I love the seashore:

The seacoast shall become the possession 

of the remnant of the house of Judah

on which they shall graze,

and in the houses of Ashkelon

they shall lie down at evening.

For the Lord their God will be mindful of them

and restore their fortunes.

Zephaniah 2:7 (ESV)

This was a part I had never noticed before... God promises to undo the effects of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) on The Day of The Lord:

For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples

to a pure speech,

that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord

and serve Him with one accord.

Zephaniah 3:9 (ESV)

And last, I will leave you with the most famous verse from Zephaniah, and one of my personal favorites:

The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you you by His love;

He will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

Micah 7:18-19

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of His inheritance?

He does not retain His anger forever,
because He delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us;
He will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.

Micah 7:18-19 (ESV)

*********

God loves His children.  Those He calls, He justifies.  Those He justifies, He will glorify.  (see Romans 8:29-30)

How do you know if you are called, if you are part of the beloved remnant of His inheritance?

If your heart has a desire for God, you are called.  

Nobody who wants to come to Him will ever be turned away.

Jesus said:

"All that the Father gives me will come to me, 

and whoever comes to me I will never cast out." 

 ~John 6:37 (ESV)

If you want Him, He is waiting for you.  

Come to Him.  

He will forgive you and cast your sins into the depths of the sea.

The Suffering of Christ

I have been writing about what I believe.

But not very often.  (Although I think I have not yet fallen to less than once a month...)

I got into a "mini-series" about suffering, and found that I was over my head.

On this blog, my only aim is to share a little thought about a Bible verse (if one pops into my head), after I do my daily Bible reading.  Somehow it turned into something bigger than I had intended.  Bigger than I could adequately handle.

Instead of trying to grapple with huge thoughts, I want to get back to dealing with daily Bible verses, even if I don't quite do it on a daily basis.

But I could not end this series without writing about the most important part of all:  Jesus.

I've already written about the suffering of Joseph and the suffering of Job.  But the most important suffering that ever took place was the suffering of Jesus.

This suffering series began as a reaction against the notion that, "A good God would never allow all the awful suffering we see in the world."  This is what people say: atheists, agnostics, people.  They look at the suffering in the world, and they decide that they have invincible proof: because there is suffering, therefore there is no God, or at any rate, not a good God whom anyone would care to follow.

And they completely miss the most important aspect in all of Christianity:  Jesus is the central focus of our faith.

Jesus is the Messiah promised throughout the entire history of the Old Testament.  Jesus is the culmination of all God's promises kept (2 Corinthians 1:20).  Jesus is God's perfect provision to bridge the gap between a Holy God and hopeless, helpless, sinful humans.  Jesus is our Savior, our Redeemer, our Hope, our Friend and our Example.

And Jesus suffered.

Hebrew 12:2 says,  "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (NIV 1984)

God looked at this world, this sinful, fallen world.  He had created it perfect and beautiful, and because He graciously allowed us the freedom to make our own choices, we fundamentally ruined it.  Of course there are remnants of His beauty all over.  It's not that easy to eradicate perfect beauty entirely.  So somehow, in our sinful foolishness, we get the idea that we can take credit for the beauty and the goodness that remain.  And in our perverted minds, we wrongly pin on God the blame for the effects of sin.  This is exactly backwards.  But be that as it is, God looked down and had mercy on us, and He sent His only begotten Son to die in our place, taking the punishment we deserve, so that we could have a restored relationship with our Creator.

"For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21. ESV) ~~this must be one of the most wonderful and mysterious verses in all of the Bible.

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24)

"Surely he took up our infirmities
    and carried our sorrows,
"yet we considered him stricken by God,
    smitten by him, and afflicted.
"But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
"the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
    and by his wounds we are healed. "  (Isaiah 53:4-5) 

In bearing our sins, Jesus suffered.

Jesus suffered.

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.  For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." (Hebrews 2:9-10, ESV)

Jesus suffered

• for our sake
• in obedience to His Father
• for the joy set before Him.

When Jesus was praying in the garden on the night He was crucified, He prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will," (Mark 14:36).  He knew how terrible His suffering would be.  He wished there were a different way to accomplish the Father's will.  But there was not a different way.  The cross was the Father's will, and Jesus surrendered Himself in perfect obedience.

We think about the lashings, the crown of thorns, the spitting and slapping and cursing.  We think of the long walk up the hill of Golgotha, the heavy, rough-hewn cross pressing into His already excoriated shoulders.  We think of the nails pounded into His hands and feet, the suffocating pressure of being raised to hang in agony under the hot sun.  

All these things produced intense suffering.  But even so, I believe that an even greater suffering fell upon Jesus when He was crushed under all the sins of the world.  He, Jesus, the perfect, unblemished Lamb of God, the One who never sinned, even under the utmost duress from Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4, Luke 4).  He was God Himself, in human flesh, and God cannot look at sin (Habakkuk 1:13).  Yet, Jesus bore in His body the brunt of all the sins of mankind, while the Father had to turn His face away, and the Son cried out, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).  This is suffering indeed.

Jesus suffered and died because He had a greater hope.  He knew that this life is just a shadow of the life to come.  He knew that God would make everything perfect and beautiful and eternally right forevermore in the age to come.  Jesus did not suffer because He was a masochist.  Heavens no!!  He suffered because He knew that He was investing in something that would totally, completely, astoundingly make up for it in the future.  He did it to accomplish the perfect, holy, magnificent will of God for the Redemption of His people.

And here is a sobering thought.  Jesus is our example.  We are to become like Him, just like Him.  Remember that "cup" about which He said, "...if it be possible, let this cup pass from me..." ?  Well, earlier, Jesus told his disciples, "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with..." (Mark 10:39 NIV 1984)  

We are called to pour ourselves out, just as Jesus did.

Paul wrote, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death..." (Philippians 3:10 NIV 1984)

We are called to "complete the sufferings of Christ," (Colossians 1:24), which means that although Christ's work on the cross was perfect and complete, we are to expend our lives in this temporal world reaching out to share the good news with all who will listen and respond.  And we are to do this without holding back for our own comfort or survivial.

Just as Jesus suffered,

we are to suffer

• for the sake of those yet to come into the Kingdom
• in obedience to our Father
• for the joy set before us.

As Jim Eliot wisely said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Yes, ours is a religion of suffering.  But it is suffering for a purpose: for truth, for beauty, for peace, for joy, for eternal life.  After our suffering, the full glory of God will be revealed.  Then, like a mother with her perfect newborn baby, only 100,000,000,000 times more wonderfully, we will forget the pain and bask in the splendor of the King forever.

Jesus said, "I have told you these things, 

so that in me you may have peace. 

In this world you will have trouble. 

But take heart! I have overcome the world." 

                          (John 16:33, NIV 1984)

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

Goodness, writing can be hard.  

This is so long, probably nobody will read the whole thing, 

and yet I feel that I left out many important points.

Nevertheless, I am leaving this "What I believe" series for now.  

And I will try to write more often and more concisely.
Would you believe it?  This was my 100th post.

The Suffering of Job (part 2)

Quite a long time ago, I began writing about Job.

I've been trying to explain how God uses suffering for good in our lives.

The curious thing about Job:  It is the oldest book of the Bible, the first book of the Bible ever written.  And it deals with suffering.

God's first written revelation of Himself was through a story whose theme is suffering.

Why would God do this?

I think God wanted us to know, from the beginning, that He is not predictable.

That's right:  God is not predictable.

We cannot control Him.  All we can do is respond to Him.

Job was a really, really good guy.  The Bible says,

"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil."  (Job 1:1 NIV)  

The Bible also tells us, 

"His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, 'Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' This was Job’s regular custom." (Job 1:4-5 NIV)

(Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why the book is dated so early... it had to be before the revelation of the Law of Moses when God explained how the Levitical priesthood was to function, since Job, who--presumably--was not a Levite, was offering sacrifices with impunity.)

Anyway, Job was doing everything right.  The Bible even calls him "blameless and upright."  What would you expect to happen to a man like this?

You would expect, I think, that such a man would receive blessings and honor from God.  You would expect a good God, a loving God, a fair God, to look at Job and say, "Hey, Job!  You are doing a great job there!  Thanks for working so hard to live a clean life, a testimony to my righteousness.  Just because you're doing so well, I'm going to shower you with riches and fame, and make your name great... my way of saying thank you!"

You might think that's what God would do.  You might even think that's what God should do.  But what does God do?

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 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.”
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” 
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”  The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6-12 NIV)

Notice:

1. Satan did not notice Job and ask for permission to torment him.  God pointed Job out to Satan.
2. God pointed Job out precisely because he was "blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." 
3. Satan told God, in essence,  "The only reason Job is so good is because you have blessed him so much.  You made him rich, but if you take away his riches, he will curse you to your face."

If you read the account, you will see that God first gave Satan permission to take away Job's possessions, and when Job did not waver in his faith, God then gave Satan permission to strike Job's health and well-being.  (Job 1-2)

When Job was stricken in every way and miserable beyond belief, three of his friends came to visit him and cheer him up (yes, I am being sarcastic).  They looked at Job's plight, and their interpretation of it was this:  "Wow, man.  You must have really messed up.  God would only do this to a really, really wicked person.  What secret sin have you been hiding, anyway?"

Here begins, in the book of Job, a circular argument in which Job's friends repeatedly tell Job that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous, and that if Job will only repent and turn from his sin, God will surely start to bless him again.

This is the paradigm of their religion, and it continues to be the paradigm of most religion to this very day:  Good things happen to good people.  Bad things happen to bad people.  If bad things happen to you, say you're sorry and let the good times roll again.

With a religious paradigm like this, I say it's no wonder there are atheists.  Because clearly we can look around and see bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people every day.

But from the very beginning of recorded scripture, God was letting us know that, no, this is not the way it is.

We cannot control God through our actions.  We can never behave well enough to deserve and earn His blessings.  Job's friends told Job that if he would just give up his sin and cooperate with God, God would give him mercy instead of punishment.  However, in Exodus 33:19 (and quoted again in Romans 9:15), God does not say, "I will have mercy on the good people," or "I will have mercy on the sorry people."  No.  God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."

Right from the very beginning, God started teaching us that we cannot do this in our own power.  It is not about what we do.  It is about what He does.

Right from the very beginning, God used the suffering of Job to illustrate the strength of real, God-bestowed faith.  In his own strength, Job surely would have cursed God and died.  But God had placed His mark on Job.  Job was one of His, one of the elect.  God knew that Job would persevere through the suffering because God knew that the faith Job held was not faith from within Job.  It was faith granted by God.  That is why God could point Job out to Satan and have complete confidence that Job's faith would endure.

"Have you considered my servant Job... ?"

Right from the beginning, God used suffering to enable Job to develop the conception of an afterlife.  It is quite fascinating to read through the book and see how tiny seeds of the idea of an afterlife grow and blossom in Job's consciousness until he can state with triumph, "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes —I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27 NIV)

This development of thought is not unlike the logic Abraham used when he took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him.  Abraham knew that Isaac was the child of the promise.  God had made this perfectly clear to him.  God clearly and definitely promised, covenanted with Abraham to make a great nation from the line of Isaac.  So when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, He was not asking Abraham to part with his son.  He was asking him, (a) "Did I promise to make a great nation from Isaac?"  and (b) "Do you believe I can and will keep my promise?"  Abraham did.  Hebrews 11:19 tells us that Abraham figured God would raise Isaac from the dead if that was what He needed to do to keep His promise, and Abraham had unwavering faith that God would keep His promise.

In a somewhat similar reasoning style, Job figured that (a) God is fair and (b) life is not fair, therefore, (c) there must be another life, in which justice is restored.

God used suffering to point Job towards everlasting life.

Ultimately, God used the suffering of Job to get a hold of Job's face and turn it upwards to where Job could experience God in a new and amazing way: God his Creator, Redeemer, Restorer and Savior.   (Read Job 38-42, one of my ultimate favorite Bible passages.)  

At the same time, God decisively trampled the pride of Satan by showing that faith from God can withstand any storm the evil one can muster... and prevail in victory!  (This I get from John Piper, but I'm not sure where he wrote it so I can't provide a direct quote, although I'd like to give him credit.)

God uses suffering.

final post in series

The Suffering of Job (part 1)

There exist many atheists and agnostics who say, "There can't possibly be a god.  How could a loving god allow all the suffering that exists in the world?"

Well, the Bible certainly never says that there will be no earthly suffering.

You may say that the Bible is balderdash, that it could not possibly be true, that you have no time for it.  You can say all that, and I can't stop you.  All I'm saying is:  for those of us who worship the Judeo-Christian God, who get our information about Him from the Bible, the Bible says that there will be suffering, and not the opposite.  So the existence of suffering cannot be used as proof against our religion, or the existence of our God.

In fact, there is a whole book of the Bible that is entirely about suffering: the book of Job (pronounced Jobe, with a long o).

Here is a very interesting detail:  The book of Job is generally considered to be the oldest book in the Bible.  Scholars date it prior to the Torah which is the collection of the five books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) which Moses wrote after God spoke to him on Mt. Sinai.

The book of Genesis is Moses' account of what God told him about the origin of all things, and the beginning of the history of humanity.  It covers Creation, the span of time and lineage of humanity up until Noah, Noah's Flood, more lineage, the call of Abram, and then the stories of Abraham's descendants: Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob, particularly the story of Joseph.  All of this business was finished approximately 400 years before Moses came on the scene to write it down.

I tell you this because the book of Job is usually dated at the time of Abraham.  As I have heard one Bible teacher say, "Job and Abraham played together when they were little boys."  Not necessarily, but that is the time frame where most people place the book of Job.  My study Bibles, in the introductions they provide for the book of Job, date it at around 2000 B.C., although one says 2000-1800 B.C. and the other allows for the possibility of it being written as late as 500 B.C.  Traditional, conservative scholars quite consistently place the date of the book of Job 350-550 years earlier than the Torah, which was written around 1445 B.C.

I tell you this, because it is exceedingly remarkable to me that the earliest recorded part of the Word of God, which probably existed hundreds of years prior to any other revelation, deals with the matter of suffering.

Do you know what that says?  It says that the first thing God ever revealed about Himself or His character was directly related to suffering, and not only to the existence of suffering.  At the very beginning of Job, the writer tells us all about what a great guy Job was, how righteous, how diligent, how responsible, how wealthy...

And then... then God says to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?"

Satan did not ask God if he could torment Job.  Satan simply presented himself before God along with the angels one day, and God looked at him and said, "Have you considered my servant Job?"  Testing Job was all God's idea.

Not only does this seem very strange, and very contrary to our mental image of a good and loving God, but this is the first revelation of God that was ever put down on paper.

What was God doing?  Why did He reveal Himself this way??

We will get into that next time.  In the meantime, read Job, chapters 1-2, and while you do, think about how this was probably God's first big move to show Himself to mankind.   Why???

for part 2, click here

Tripod

I will get back to my series about what I believe.  Soon.  I promise.

Overwhelmedness shut me down temporarily.

Today I'm going to write a short, simple post to try to get back into the swing.  This sometimes works.

Our pastor has been teaching us that there is a tripod of necessities for the growing Christian.  He says these three necessetiies are:

(A)  The Savior
(B)  The Scriptures
(C)  The Saints

In other words, we need God, specifically His revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ.  We need to know Him and love Him, to pray to Him and to seek Him.

We need God's word, the Bible.  We need to read it, learn it and practice it.

We need the body of Christ, the church, the fellowship of believers. We need to meet together, to love each other and be loved.  We need to encourage each other and hold each other accountable.

Our pastor said, though, the other day, "I don't think these things are exactly equal... not exactly a tripod that holds equal weight in each direction."

I would agree.  I've been thinking about it, and I think these spiritual necessities correspond to some physical necessities that we have.  Our spiritual needs for the Savior, the scriptures and the saints correspond to our physical needs for air, water and food.

Our need for the Savior, for Jesus, is like the need for air.  If you can't breathe, you die quite quickly.  Without Jesus, we have no hope of salvation.  No hope.  Jesus is everything.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  (John 14:6, NIV)

Our need for the scriptures is like our need for water.  We can go a little while without them, but not long.  They are crucial for our spiritual survival, just as water is crucial for physical survival.

I will never forget your precepts,
    for by them you have preserved my life.
(Psalm 119:93, NIV) 

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1:23, NIV)

...and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:15-17, NIV)

And lastly, our need for the saints, for Christian fellowship, is like our need for food.  If we have air to breathe and water to drink, we can survive for quite a few days, even weeks.  So it is with Christian fellowship.  In a way, we can get along without it, as long as we have Jesus in our hearts and the Bible in our hands.  But we will not be healthy.  We will not thrive.  We will not be strong.  We will not grow.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.  (1 Thessalonians 5:11, NIV)

Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. (2 Corinthians 13:11, NIV)

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25, NIV) 

If you are a Christian, you know Jesus; you are spiritually alive.  You are (metaphorically) breathing.  

Don't neglect the scriptures (metaphorically drinking).


And don't neglect the fellowship of the saints.  Like a (metaphorically) good Jewish mama, I say, "Eat!"

The suffering of Joseph

The story of Joseph is one of the most wonderful stories in the Bible. Broadway even made a musical based on this incredible account.

You can read about Joseph in Genesis, chapters 37-50. I'd recommend that you read it in a more modern translation to get the full effect of the drama. Try the NIV or the NLT.

Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham who was called by God to be the father of God's special chosen nation.

Joseph arrived in the middle of a rather sticky family situation. His father, Jacob, had married two sisters, Leah and Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel, but her father tricked him into marrying Leah first, because she was the older sister. Right off the bat we have an unloved wife and a favored wife.

Leah was fertile and produced sons, but Rachel was barren. This only added to the rivalry between the two of them. After Leah birthed four sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah), Rachel became so upset and jealous that she told Jacob to sleep with her handmaiden and thus produce some children for her. Two more sons (Dan and Naphtali) were born this way, to Rachel's servant, Bilhah.

Leah saw what was happening and offered her own handmaiden, Zilpah, to Jacob to surrogate for her. Zilpah produced two more sons, Gad and Asher.

Then Leah herself had two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun.

By then, Rachel was probably tearing her hair out, hovering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. God finally opened her womb and gave her a son, Joseph.

So you see, Joseph was not born into an ideal family situation. He was, at the time, the youngest of the sons from four different women who were all wives (of a sort) of his father. His mother was the favorite wife, so he was the favorite son. This may not sound like a suffering situation, but think about it... ten older brothers who all had reason to resent him and be jealous of him. Sounds pretty scary to me.

Then Rachel conceived again and bore a twelfth son for Jacob (Benjamin was his name). Unfortunately, this time Rachel died in childbirth. Now Joseph didn't even have a mother to stand up for him in the middle of the fray.

Jacob, because he loved Joseph best, gave him a fancy (many colored) coat and favored him over his brothers. Jacob put Joseph in a position of authority over his brothers. As family manager, Joseph brought his father some bad reports about how his brothers were conducting themselves.

Little brothers who get special gifts and privileges and who "tattle-tale" do not gain much popularity with their older siblings.

But things got even worse. Joseph had some dreams full of symbols that suggested that he would one day rule over his family. Being young and brash (perhaps even in reaction to hostilities that the brothers may have expressed against him), Joseph did not keep these dreams to himself; he told his family all about them. Maybe he shouldn't have done this, but it worked right into God's eternal plan. Joseph's brothers became so angry, they finally decided to kill him.

Joseph's brothers worked at pasturing flocks... they traveled with the family animals to find food and water. One day Jacob sent Joseph out again to check up on them (poor kid, he was only 17). On this particular day, when the brothers saw Joseph coming, they devised a plan to get rid of him. When he caught up with them, they grabbed him, stripped off his fancy robe, and threw him into a pit. The eldest, Reuben, had some second thoughts at this point and he encouraged the others to wait and not commit immediate murder. He was trying to figure out a way to sneak back and get Joseph out of the pit.

The plan was to tear up the robe, cover it with the blood of an animal, and take it back to Jacob with the story that a wild animal got Joseph while he was out and about. Reuben went off somewhere, and the rest of the brothers sat down to eat.

About this time, a caravan of merchants came by, and Judah (who, like Reuben, was hoping to avoid killing his brother) talked the group into selling Joseph as a slave. The merchants gave the brothers twenty shekels of silver and took Joseph down to Egypt.

Are you starting to see yet how Joseph suffered? Lost his mother, hated by his brothers, stripped of his clothes, thrown into a pit, and sold into slavery. Do you think he was tempted to be depressed? Do you think he wondered, "Why me?"

He must have held together enough to appear to be a good buy. When Joseph hit the Egyptian market, Potiphar, the captain of the king's army, purchased him to be his slave. Joseph wound up in a rather influential, prosperous household. Moreover, Joseph worked diligently and capably, and Potiphar trusted him implicitly with all he had. The Bible says that Joseph managed everything for Potiphar; the only thing Potiphar did was pick out the menu for his chef to cook each day. Although it stinks to be a slave, Joseph was clearly making the best of it, working hard, trusting God, maintaining a positive attitude.

Unfortunately, Potiphar's wife noticed what a cracker-jack Joseph was and took a shine to him. Clearly he was gifted and intelligent; this suggests that he was also handsome and charming. Joseph did his best to elude her advances, explaining to her that he had no desire to do this wicked thing and thus sin against God. But one day, she caught him all alone and grabbed onto his clothes, demanding that he go to bed with her. Joseph, upstanding guy that he was, ran away as fast as he could. She, however, had held his garment so tightly, she ended up with it in her hands after he fled. She looked down and saw it, and then she began to scream.

When the other servants came to see what was the matter, she made up a lie. She told them that Joseph had tried to take advantage of her. This part of the story makes me so mad! There is nothing that frustrates me more than when somebody does the right thing and gets punished for it. I have to keep reminding myself, this is part of God's plan.

Poor Joseph was thrown into prison. I think we all need to take attitude lessons from Joseph, because even in prison he worked hard and stayed positive. The prison officials recognized what a great guy he was, and they put Joseph in charge of the prison, over all the prisoners.

God was clearly working in and around Joseph, lifting his heart, giving him favor with those above him. I don't think any of us could have gone through the things Joseph underwent and exhibited the grace and hope that Joseph exhibited without the power of God at work in us. They say it's lonely at the top, but that's what happened to Joseph time and time again: he became a manager; he was in charge; he was faithful; he was unpopular; he stayed positive. The grace God can pour on a life is just amazing to me.

In the prison, a couple of prisoners had dreams. They had been special servants of the king, and they were very curious about what their dreams meant. Joseph was gifted at interpreting dreams, so (with God's help) he interpreted theirs. According to these dreams, the king's former cupbearer would be restored to his old job within three days. The king's former baker would be executed by hanging. Joseph's interpretations came true, and Joseph asked the cupbearer to please speak to the king about getting him out of prison, too.

The cupbearer forgot about Joseph for two more years.

I'm not kidding. Joseph had a tough life. It seems like everything just went wrong for him, again and again.

But behind the scenes, in God's perfect plan, God's perfect timing, everything was happening right on schedule.

Two years later, the king had a dream one night and wanted to know what it meant. Finally the cupbearer remembered Joseph. They pulled Joseph out of prison and cleaned him up, shaved him, gave him some decent clothes. Joseph then interpreted the king's dream, which was a message of an impending famine in the land. This famine would come after seven years of bountiful harvests.

"Whatever shall I do?" asked the king.

"Choose a wise manager to store up grain during the plentiful years so there will be food to eat during the years of famine," said Joseph.

"Will you do it?" asked the king.

And of course, Joseph took it on. In so doing, Joseph was in position to offer food and sanctuary to all of his father's family, all the sons of Jacob... all the sons of Israel. When the famine hit, the children of Israel survived because of how God had worked in Joseph's life to bring him to a place where he could provide for his people.

Joseph suffered like crazy. His mom died, his bothers hated him, he was stripped and thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, unjustly imprisoned, and finally forgotten for an extra two years.

In the end, Joseph rose to a position of great power in Egypt and saved the lives of his entire family.

Was it worth it to him? It must have been. When he revealed himself to his brothers, he said, "I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve your life." (Genesis 45:4-5, ESV) Later, he told them again, "As for me, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." (Genesis 50:20, ESV)

Whether or not it was worth it to Joseph, though, it was worth everything to us. God used Joseph as His special instrument to preserve the nation of Israel. Why? So that Jesus Christ would one day be born from these ancestors. From the line of Judah, brother of Joseph, at just the right time, Jesus, the Savior of the World was born.

Joseph suffered so that one day Jesus was born.

God uses suffering.



But wait, there's more...

What I believe: God uses suffering

People who are antagonistic towards Christianity have a trump card. At least, they think they do.

Here is how it works:

You have a deep conversation with one of these antagonistic people. You share about your own experiences with the Lord. You discuss the historical accuracy of the Biblical record. You talk about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

At the end, the antagonist rolls her eyes and says, "Yes, well, I can't believe that a loving God would ever allow all this suffering." And then she blinks her eyes triumphantly because she is certain that she has checkmated you.

Can I just say, can I just say...

The entire point of Christianity is that:

(1) God created Adam and Eve and placed them in Eden, in a paradise.

(2) They disobeyed His one simple rule and thus destroyed their paradise.

(3) God spent the next 2000-odd years consummating His divine plan to restore humankind to paradise.

(4) We are not in paradise yet, but we have the opportunity to go there after we die, because of Jesus.

Did you get that?

This earth is not paradise. God does not intend it to be paradise. Paradise, the place where there is no suffering, is in the next life. There is suffering here. This is not paradise.

Jesus said, in John 16:33, "I have told you these things so that in me you might have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (NIV, emphasis mine)

Why would God allow suffering? I think a much better question would be: Why didn't God just trash all of creation and start over fresh when Adam and Eve brought sin, suffering and death into His perfect Universe? Why does God even allow us any chance at all to be reunited with Him?

Now, that is a good question. But it isn't the point of this post. This post is about suffering.

There are those who think that the existence of suffering in the world somehow provides evidence that the God of the Bible could not exist. Such people have obviously never read the Bible.

The Bible tells stories of the lives of many people throughout history. More often than not, they suffered.

Joseph suffered. Moses suffered. The children of Israel suffered. David suffered. Elijah suffered. Jeremiah suffered (we call him "the weeping prophet"). Job suffered. Paul suffered.

Jesus suffered.

The Bible is all about suffering, and how God works through suffering to accomplish His purposes. Over the next few posts, we will examine the life stories of some of these sufferers. Particularly, we will look at how God worked through their suffering to accomplish His purposes.

Before I stop today, though, I want to leave you with this:

Suppose you were a primitive person who had been born and raised in a third world country. You have no education, no exposure to modern science or technology, no familiarity with life in the Western World.

Suppose then that your father became very ill, and some people from the USA found you in your hut, trying to nurse him with whatever dirty water, feeble herbs and superstitious ceremony you had access to. Of course, he was not getting better. So, suppose these Americans loaded him onto their plane, allowing you to come along, and brought him to the USA to be treated in a modern hospital.

You arrive in the airport, everything bright and slick with superhuman voices booming from electronic loudspeakers. You begin to be afraid. But as you arrive at the hospital, your fears accelerate. They strap your father into a bed and stick him full of needles. You think they are hurting him, abusing him.

Then it turns out that your father has a major heart problem. You do not know what it means, but they tell you they are going to have to do "open heart surgery." They allow you into the operating room.

You watch with terror as they apparently kill your father with needles and gas masks. He lies still and cold on the operating table. And then they start to cut him open with sharp knives, breaking through his rib cage to lift out his heart, which they carve and stitch.

This is absolutely horrifying to you. You do not understand why they are hurting your father in this way. You want them to stop. You hate them. You do not understand.

This is how we often feel toward God when He uses suffering in our lives. We do not understand His techniques. They are so far beyond our comprehension, they seem barbaric and cruel. We have no concept of the good He can bring through His ways.

Sometimes, after undergoing certain experiences, we become better able to accept and learn from suffering. Other times, persevering in suffering simply requires great faith, superhuman faith, faith that we can get nowhere but from the very hand of God Himself.

But no matter what, the Bible never says that there won't be any suffering in this life. In fact, it says the exact opposite.

to be continued...

An addendum to yesterday

Yesterday I did not get very far.

This is frustrating to me, because I want to get on with the things I want to write about, not dabble in science which is not my field, nor do I have any desire for it to become my field.

Just because I believe that God is the creator of all things, that doesn't mean I have to be a scientist. As I said yesterday, the origins of life are outside the scope of what can be studied scientifically, anyway.

Yesterday I tried to explain that this blog is not a scientific forum.

Today I will actually deal with what the anonymous astrophysicist said about my views on evolution, and then I will put this science stuff to rest.

I hope. I sincerely hope.

The anonymous astrophysicist said, "The fact that things crystallize is against the second law of thermodynamics. Molecules in solution come together in an ordered fashion. this[sic] proves that disorder can lead to order."

Really? Now, I am a simple housewife. My experience with crystallization is mainly when my honey crystallizes. Or my maple syrup. Or the cough syrup. They crystallize, and they become unusable, and in the end I have to throw them away. This fits right in with the concept of entropy, as far as I am concerned.

Scientifically speaking, however, I understand that crystallization happens when particles settle into a pattern based on their (the particles') affinities. The particles do not say to one another, "Hey! Let's work together and organize into a structure of order and beauty!" They merely fall into a pattern because that is where their electrons repose most comfortably. In essence, they follow the path of least resistance. In my mind, the path of least resistance is very closely aligned with entropy. If there is beauty in the result, I'd say that's the fingerprints of God; God showing His creative genius in design.

The anonymous astrophysicist also said, "The way the sun works is also against the second law of thermodynamics. Hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium atoms. The sun will do so for another 4.5 billion years before there is not enough hydrogen around, and then the sun will start to burn helium (making things even less random). Don't tell god, but the things he designed are breaking the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe he already knows this?"

Obviously, God knows everything. Just setting that forth before I go on.

Just because God created the sun with a design that gives it the potential to last a very, very long time, that doesn't disprove the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As far as I know, the sun is a star, like any other star, and it has a life-cycle. It had a beginning and it will someday have an end. Just because right now it may be in a phase of (I don't know what to call it, expansion?) rather than a phase of decline, that doesn't mean it isn't ultimately headed for star death. And that is still entropy.

Likewise, babies (all kinds of babies... human babies, animal babies, even plant babies) grow before they die and decompose. I am surprised that you didn't mention this as one of your arguments. The Life Force that keeps new life rising up... spring after a hard winter, new growth after a forest fire, new babies born as older people pass away. This is contrary to my idea of entropy. I believe that it is the grace of God poured out on earth, a sign of the eternal life He offers us in contrast to the death and destruction that we face without Him. He is not contradicting Himself. He is presenting paradoxes that will lead the searcher to find Him.

When God created, each day after He finished His task for the day, He looked at what He had made and said that it was good. Everything was perfect and beautiful.

We don't know how long Adam and Eve may have lived in the paradise of Eden before the serpent appeared and messed everything up. When you read the Bible, verse follows verse, and on first impression it seems as though they were only there for three or four days. But the Bible never says how long they lived in sinless perfection. It could have been centuries. I think they lived in a world without entropy. A world with no death, no decay, no destruction. And when God said, "When you eat of the fruit, you will surely die," what that meant was: on that day, entropy will enter the world system. And it did. However, I believe that God, in His grace and mercy, left signs of His Life Force amidst the entropy, signs that would reflect His beauty, His order, His love. Signs that would draw the seekers to find Him. These signs are often what an atheist sees as contradictions, but I see as paradoxes, mysteries that can lead us to Christ.

Adam and Eve did not fall down dead on the day they disobeyed, but death entered the world, the Universe... and entropy began. What had been eternal became mortal. All of creation was suddenly caught in a cycle that leads ultimately, inevitably, to death and decay. But in all of it, God did not leave us without hope.

Romans 8:20-21 says, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." (ESV) Creation has been in bondage to decay ever since Adam and Eve sinned. But (also in Romans 8), Paul writes that the creation waits in eager expectation for Jesus to return and make things new, that it has been groaning as with the pains of childbirth throughout these years of waiting.

In Revelation, the Lord's promise is that He will make all things new. (Revelation 21:5) He will create a new heaven and a new earth. A new creation. One without tears, death, decay or entropy.

About my statistical analysis of evolution (I say that tongue-in-cheek; I despise statistical math), the anonymous astrophysicist said this: "Your watch argument is also flawed. The planet/god/mother nature didn't make life this way at all. You bring two things together, then you bring three, and then you bring four .... Each time you make a small addition that takes billions of years. It's called evolution."

So... who brings two things together, and then three and then four? Because as far as I am aware, in a random nebula of particles, nobody is counting out the parts, picking the one he wants and then holding on to it until the next good one comes along.

Each time who makes a small addition? This doesn't sound like a very efficient building process for a sentient God to follow, but I think someone would have to be sentient to be picking and holding and waiting and selecting.

My own son tried to explain to me that evolutionists see it this way. He used some sort of analogy about monkeys drawing cards one at a time. I could sort of see what he was getting at, although I couldn't figure out why you would have faith that the monkeys would hold onto the good cards and not drop them as they waited (and waited and waited and waited) for a desirable sequence to form, so it seemed like quite a stretch to me. As you say, "It's called evolution."

I maintain that whether you have all the particles there at once and expect them to figure out a productive arrangement, or whether somehow you insert some anonymous unconscious (unrecognized) force that takes them one at a time and then adds to them one at a time, the odds are formidably opposed to anything productive ever rising out of the process.

Finally, the anonymous astrophysicist said, "I would love to see your ridiculous argument against carbon dating, or any other atomic dating for that matter."

I'm just saying that carbon dating is based on accepting evolution as a fact, not a theory. And evolution is necessarily a theory because it can never be scientifically proven through observation and experimentation. It can only be pieced together through what we do have in front of us to study, which will never be enough to prove it categorically. Everything I've ever read about carbon dating sounds very circular to me. It all comes back to rest on evolution, and I am not convinced by evolution. Then they use it to "prove" evolution, which is what it rests on in the first place.

This is very frustrating to me, and the way I feel about it makes me think of how someone who does not believe in God would feel if someone tried to use Bible verses to prove to him that there is a god.

In my perspective, there is a lot of internal and external evidence that the Bible is true. It is full of genealogies which can often be documented. There are many internal prophecies that were fulfilled many years after the prophesies were recorded. Many of the historical events in the Bible are corroborated in archaeological findings and secondary sources.

In an evolutionist's perspective, I expect that there is also a lot of evidence that the theory of evolution is logical, probable, and sensible. So perhaps it was not entirely fair for me to say that carbon dating may actually be a more striking example of circular reasoning than is proving the existence of God with the Bible. That's the way I see it, but I can see that to a proponent of carbon dating, the opposite would be the case.

It all depends on your perspective.

Just keep in mind: all perspectives are not created equal, and not all perspectives lead to the discovery of truth.

Ugh, I hate these long posts. I hope we can put this to rest. If you want to be an evolutionist, I suppose your mind is made up and I can't probably convince you of anything else.

I believe that God is the Creator of all things.

New link to "Part 2"

Interestingly, something has "happened" to the link to my my most controversial post. (Random chance? I wonder?)

You can still view it in sequence from my home page, if you scroll down. But you cannot link to it directly.

So I will repost it here, and see what happens.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

What I believe: God is the Creator of all things, part 2

I spent the last post detailing why and how I believe that God is the Creator.

Today I am super crunched for time.

I am going to give you two reasons why I don't think evolution makes any sense, and one reason why I think it's kind of crazy to try to make it make sense.

In fifteen minutes or less.

Seriously, I'm sweating now. And I type really badly when I'm stressed.

Two reasons why the theory of evolution doesn't make sense:

(1) The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(2) Statistics.

I'm not sure which to begin with, as they are inter-related. I guess I'll start with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that left alone, everything proceeds towards entropy. Entropy is increasing randomness or chaos, in other words: decay.

I am both a mother and a homeowner. I know that this is true. If I do not apply a lot of energy and work to my situation, things go downhill. Little children left alone in a room destroy it... until they reach a sentient age where they can be taught to join me in applying positive energy (work) to the situation to improve it rather than destruct it.

My children may or may not remember me telling them, as they played, "We are going to be constructive. We are not going to be destructive." This was a constant lesson I attempted to drum into them. "We build towers with our blocks," I told them, "we do not throw our blocks at each other or at the walls." I needed to emphasize these things, because left on their own, they would always destruct rather than construct. It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You have to work very hard and very deliberately to counter the forces of nature.

This is why your house needs to be painted (or at least washed ) every few years. Why your plumbing needs to be cleaned out, why your roof needs to be replaced, why your landscaping needs to be pruned and weeded and eventually overhauled. It's even why your kitchen floor needs to be swept.

Everything is constantly moving towards disorder.

This tells me that the theory of evolution is impossible. Things simply, on their own, do not move from disorder to order. A mass of unorganized matter is never going to magically arrange itself into something that is ordered and eventually culminates in life. Apart from positive energy being applied to the situation by a sentient being (in this case, I'm arguing for God), it isn't going to happen. The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us so, and all you need is a little bit of high school science to understand this.

On to statistics: I do not play the lottery. I never buy lottery tickets because I understand odds, and I do not like to waste my money. Same with Las Vegas. I look at the money they are using to build their high-rises, put on their shows, power their glitzy lights, and I know it comes from somewhere... from the poor fools who gamble and lose and gamble and lose. In Las Vegas, a few people win a little bit now and then, but overall, there is a vast conspiracy to make sure that the casinos are wildly profitable. It's kind of like insurance, except that there are government mandates that I buy insurance (even though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the insurance companies are rigged to be sure that they take in far more than they ever pay out). There are no government mandates that I gamble. So, hallelujah, I don't!!

I understand the odds against winning in Las Vegas and against winning the lottery. However the odds are infinitely more likely that I would win at either of these than that evolution could ever have brought us life as we know it.

I don't care how much time you give it. More time doesn't mean better chances. More time means a further descent into entropy.

Think of a watch, a handy piece of workmanship. It's a very intricate thing, in its way. Of course, it is not nearly as intricate as, say, a solar system, or a daffodil, or a rabbit... or a human.

Suppose you took the pieces of a watch, all of them, nice, fresh-off-the-line screws and gears and whatever all else is inside a watch. Suppose you took them all, not one piece missing, and you put them into a box and you shook that box. Say you shook it for two hours straight. Do you think those parts would, within those two hours, form themselves into a watch?

Well, they wouldn't.

And suppose you continued to shake the box for a year. Fifty years. Three billion years. Over that length of time, are the contents of that box going to become more or less like a watch?

You don't know? Well, I'll tell you. After three billion years of shaking in that box, what used to be watch parts would have decomposed into dust (oh! we're back to entropy!). Materials that at one point could have fit together to form a watch are ground down into useless rubbish. Why? Because there was no sentient energy applied to the situation. (Although not sentient, we did apply energy! Imagine what would have happened over three billion years if the box just sat on a table.)

If you can't do it with a watch, it stands to reason that you couldn't do it with a universe.

You need a sentient, powerful God to create life.

They try to create life in the lab from "raw materials." Never mind that they aren't worrying about what would have been the original source of these raw materials (which they ordered from a catalog of chemicals). If we put that thought out of our minds, they've actually gotten pretty close to producing life. But they've never accomplished anything without applying brain power and energy to the experiment. I rest my case.

Lastly, it makes no sense to pursue the idea of evolution because clearly, the chicken had to come before the egg.

God created things in a mature form. He did not make Adam as an embryo or a six-month-old baby or even a nine-year-old-child. If He had, Adam would have required care. God made Adam as a fully grown adult male, and Eve as fully formed adult female. God made trees as trees, ready to produce fruit with seeds for reproduction. He made fish as fish, birds as birds and kangaroos as kangaroos.

We didn't get a glimpse of how our development worked until the first reproductive cycle began. In reproduction, things start from a single cell, and within this cell are the DNA blueprints for whatever multi-celled organism that cell is programmed to become. Creation and reproduction are not the same thing. Creation was when God wrote the blueprints and stored them in the DNA. Reproduction is when the cell follows the directions God gave it. Adaptation is when the blueprints flex to accommodate different environmental factors, and it certainly happens. But the adaptation of a species is not the same as the development of a new species (something we have never seen in recorded history; conversely, we have seen species become extinct, because that is the result of entropy).

It is my belief that people are clearly starting from a flawed premise when they try to work backwards to find the "first single celled organism." If you start from a flawed premise, you get flawed science.

Oh, I hadn't planned to mention this, but here's a freebie before I go: Carbon dating is at least as much an example of circular reasoning as is proving the existence of God with the Bible. Actually more so. Maybe we'll talk about that next time.

An attempt to begin at what I had hoped not to become embroiled in...

I am going to begin to respond to the comment the anonymous astrophysicist left on What I believe: God is the Creator of all things, part 2.

First off, I want to clarify something: I do not consider myself a scientist. I am related to a number of scientists, even hard-core scientists. But I am not a scientist myself. And the purpose of this blog has never had anything to do with science or any desire to be scientific.

I have a BA in English.

After that, I stayed home to raise my children.

I have earned less than $20,000, total, in my entire life. No lie. I know this because I get letters from Social Security telling me how much I do not have in their accounts.

I tell you this to demonstrate that I am not here to try to impress, or to prove something, or even to convince. I am just laying out my own theology, what I believe. You can take it or leave it, like it or hate it. There are Christians whose hearts bleed for the lost. I am not really quite one of them. My heart bleeds for those who are searching, but not for those who are happily determined to reject the Lord. I will feel blessed and thankful if anyone is ever touched by the Lord through this blog, but if people read it and reject it, that is their problem and not mine. There are too many people following the way to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14), too many for me to lie awake at night stressing over them all.

I have spent too much time around people who are dead set against loving Jesus, atheist types. I've been around enough of them that I don't have much hope for their souls. Of course, I believe that all things are possible with God, and that He and only He (not I) knows who is destined for salvation and who is destined for damnation.

In obedience to my Lord, I am writing about what I believe, and my hope is that somehow this might benefit someone who may be searching for answers. If God can use my simple words to bless and save anyone, then that is His miracle and no testimony to my background, education or writing skills (or bleeding heart).

If you ask me honest questions that you are really wrestling with, I will do my best to answer them thoughtfully. But if you heckle me and put me down, I will remove your comment. The world has pretty much heckled me and put me down my whole adult life because of the counter-cultural choices I've made, and I have taken it. However, on this blog, which I manage myself, I will remove the unpleasantness. Because I can.

In the Bible, Jesus says, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will." (Luke 10:21, ESV)

Later, Luke records this story about Jesus: "Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, 'Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.' " (Luke 18:15-16, ESV)

God wants us to come to Him with childlike faith. He did not set up His witness to His existence to be a difficult puzzle. God's presence in the world is simple enough for a child to discern. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has set eternity in men's hearts, to make us wonder, even though we cannot fathom all that God has done.

Now, some Christians (too many, in my opinion), decide that science leads us away from God, science is evil, therefore we should eschew science. This is what they understand to be "childlike faith."

I think that is foolishness, utter rubbish. Childlike faith is about how we approach God, not how we handle our science classes. However, there is a kernel of truth hidden in the folly. We do need to be careful of how we accept the teaching of "scientists" who begin their scientific exploration from a fundamental premise that there must be no God. If they are stubbornly operating from the premise that there is not, never has been, never will be, never could be a God, then they are as foolish as the Christians who are afraid of science. They are afraid of God. (And not in a "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" way; rather, in a "if I can't see you, you can't do anything to me," way.)

Since nobody was there when it all began, and nobody will ever be able to travel back in time to see what happened, we must recognize that the origins of life are not something we can scientifically study. Science requires observation, hypothesis and testing of the hypothesis. We can't do that with the theory of evolution. We can only observe what is before us now and try to piece together an explanation. Have you ever read an Agatha Christie novel? There are myriad ways to piece together evidence, but only one right answer.

The only way we'll ever figure out who was right about the origins of life is after we die. If, when you die, you simply cease to exist and your cells just decompose down into dirt, then you were right (not much glory in it at that point, though). On the other hand, if you find your eternal soul in the courtroom of God, judged by His perfect knowledge and justice on the basis of whether you accepted His Son and His forgiveness, and you didn't... then you will be cast into outer darkness and lament for all eternity that you were wrong.

An acquaintance of ours, one of the many scientific types with whom we regularly rub shoulders, one of the ones who actively opposes God for no good reason, said to me once, "Science and religion just need to stay in their own spheres. Science is over here," and he gestured with his hands to signify an area, "And religion is over here," he gestured to signify a different area.

"You can study and prove science," he told me. "You can't study and prove religion. So they should just stay in their separate areas." That would be fine, maybe, if science would stay away from trying to explain the origins of life, which it cannot by virtue of what it is... the systematic study of the physical, material world through observation and experimentation.

Do you know what I wish? I wish scientists would just be fair. I wish they would study the origins of life with an open mind. I wish they would begin their theorizing with the question, "Supposing that there might be a God at the source of life, what would it mean? How would that affect our interpretation of this evidence?" Notice I am not even asking them to suppose that there is a God, only that there might be. And I would like very much to see where that supposition would lead them.

Too long. Sorry. I certainly did not accomplish what I had hoped to cover today. More tomorrow.

Psalm 100:3

Know that the Lord, He is God!
It is He who made us and we are His,
we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.

Psalm 100:3 (ESV)

In the spirit of my recent posts... another scripture that points to God as the Creator.

I received a comment on my last post. I believe that this commenter was what is sometimes known as a "troll." He did not like my arguments against evolution. Although he posted anonymously, he claimed that he was an astrophysicist. Imagine that! An astrophysicist commenting on my little blog that gets next to no traffic. Who would have thought?

I did not appreciate the anonymous astrophysicist's tone, so I deleted his comment, but I did want to address his criticisms. I will at some point, when I am not busy with family coming home for holidays, which is much more fun.

What I believe: God is the Creator of all things, part 2

I spent the last post detailing why and how I believe that God is the Creator.

Today I am super crunched for time.

I am going to give you two reasons why I don't think evolution makes any sense, and one reason why I think it's kind of crazy to try to make it make sense.

In fifteen minutes or less.

Seriously, I'm sweating now. And I type really badly when I'm stressed.

Two reasons why the theory of evolution doesn't make sense:

(1) The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(2) Statistics.

I'm not sure which to begin with, as they are inter-related. I guess I'll start with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that left alone, everything proceeds towards entropy. Entropy is increasing randomness or chaos, in other words: decay.

I am both a mother and a homeowner. I know that this is true. If I do not apply a lot of energy and work to my situation, things go downhill. Little children left alone in a room destroy it... until they reach a sentient age where they can be taught to join me in applying positive energy (work) to the situation to improve it rather than destruct it.

My children may or may not remember me telling them, as they played, "We are going to be constructive. We are not going to be destructive." This was a constant lesson I attempted to drum into them. "We build towers with our blocks," I told them, "we do not throw our blocks at each other or at the walls." I needed to emphasize these things, because left on their own, they would always destruct rather than construct. It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You have to work very hard and very deliberately to counter the forces of nature.

This is why your house needs to be painted (or at least washed ) every few years. Why your plumbing needs to be cleaned out, why your roof needs to be replaced, why your landscaping needs to be pruned and weeded and eventually overhauled. It's even why your kitchen floor needs to be swept.

Everything is constantly moving towards disorder.

This tells me that the theory of evolution is impossible. Things simply, on their own, do not move from disorder to order. A mass of unorganized matter is never going to magically arrange itself into something that is ordered and eventually culminates in life. Apart from positive energy being applied to the situation by a sentient being (in this case, I'm arguing for God), it isn't going to happen. The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us so, and all you need is a little bit of high school science to understand this.

On to statistics: I do not play the lottery. I never buy lottery tickets because I understand odds, and I do not like to waste my money. Same with Las Vegas. I look at the money they are using to build their high-rises, put on their shows, power their glitzy lights, and I know it comes from somewhere... from the poor fools who gamble and lose and gamble and lose. In Las Vegas, a few people win a little bit now and then, but overall, there is a vast conspiracy to make sure that the casinos are wildly profitable. It's kind of like insurance, except that there are government mandates that I buy insurance (even though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the insurance companies are rigged to be sure that they take in far more than they ever pay out). There are no government mandates that I gamble. So, hallelujah, I don't!!

I understand the odds against winning in Las Vegas and against winning the lottery. However the odds are infinitely more likely that I would win at either of these than that evolution could ever have brought us life as we know it.

I don't care how much time you give it. More time doesn't mean better chances. More time means a further descent into entropy.

Think of a watch, a handy piece of workmanship. It's a very intricate thing, in its way. Of course, it is not nearly as intricate as, say, a solar system, or a daffodil, or a rabbit... or a human.

Suppose you took the pieces of a watch, all of them, nice, fresh-off-the-line screws and gears and whatever all else is inside a watch. Suppose you took them all, not one piece missing, and you put them into a box and you shook that box. Say you shook it for two hours straight. Do you think those parts would, within those two hours, form themselves into a watch?

Well, they wouldn't.

And suppose you continued to shake the box for a year. Fifty years. Three billion years. Over that length of time, are the contents of that box going to become more or less like a watch?

You don't know? Well, I'll tell you. After three billion years of shaking in that box, what used to be watch parts would have decomposed into dust (oh! we're back to entropy!). Materials that at one point could have fit together to form a watch are ground down into useless rubbish. Why? Because there was no sentient energy applied to the situation. (Although not sentient, we did apply energy! Imagine what would have happened over three billion years if the box just sat on a table.)

If you can't do it with a watch, it stands to reason that you couldn't do it with a universe.

You need a sentient, powerful God to create life.

They try to create life in the lab from "raw materials." Never mind that they aren't worrying about what would have been the original source of these raw materials (which they ordered from a catalog of chemicals). If we put that thought out of our minds, they've actually gotten pretty close to producing life. But they've never accomplished anything without applying brain power and energy to the experiment. I rest my case.

Lastly, it makes no sense to pursue the idea of evolution because clearly, the chicken had to come before the egg.

God created things in a mature form. He did not make Adam as an embryo or a six-month-old baby or even a nine-year-old-child. If He had, Adam would have required care. God made Adam as a fully grown adult male, and Eve as fully formed adult female. God made trees as trees, ready to produce fruit with seeds for reproduction. He made fish as fish, birds as birds and kangaroos as kangaroos.

We didn't get a glimpse of how our development worked until the first reproductive cycle began. In reproduction, things start from a single cell, and within this cell are the DNA blueprints for whatever multi-celled organism that cell is programmed to become. Creation and reproduction are not the same thing. Creation was when God wrote the blueprints and stored them in the DNA. Reproduction is when the cell follows the directions God gave it. Adaptation is when the blueprints flex to accommodate different environmental factors, and it certainly happens. But the adaptation of a species is not the same as the development of a new species (something we have never seen in recorded history; conversely, we have seen species become extinct, because that is the result of entropy).

It is my belief that people are clearly starting from a flawed premise when they try to work backwards to find the "first single celled organism." If you start from a flawed premise, you get flawed science.

Oh, I hadn't planned to mention this, but here's a freebie before I go: Carbon dating is at least as much an example of circular reasoning as is proving the existence of God with the Bible. Actually more so. Maybe we'll talk about that next time.

What I believe: God is the Creator of all things

When my son Jon was a wee little boy, he used to sit with his chin resting on the top of the back of the sofa, looking out the window to the yard. "Who made the trees?" he would ask me.

"God made the trees," I replied.

"Who made the clouds?"

"God did."

"Who made the grass?"

"God."

"Who made our house?"

"The builders built our house, " I told him. That always threw him, so I explained, "The builders built our house, but God made the things they built it with. For instance, they framed our house with wooden boards. God made the trees grow so the lumberjacks could cut them down and have them milled into boards to build houses."

Once even longer ago somebody else, Shannon or David, or maybe Laura, asked me, "Where was I when you were a little girl?"

"You weren't born yet when I was a little girl," I said.

"Yes, but where was I before I was born?"

Now that's a question, let me tell you.

"You were in the mind of God," I said. And they liked that. It satisfied them. They believed it. And you know what? I believe it too.

Psalm 139:15-16 says, "My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them." (ESV)

I believe that God made the world and everything in it.

I believe this because the Bible says so, and I believe that the Bible is true.

Here are some Bible passages which tell us that God made the world:

Genesis account of creation
Isaiah 45-46
Psalm 8
Psalm 19:1-3
Psalm 104
John 1:1-4
Colossians 1:15-17.

Now, this means nothing to people who do not accept the truth of the Bible. I totally understand that. I am not trying to prove to a skeptic of the Bible that God made the world because the Bible says so. I do not expect that skeptics will read the Bible and then stand up and take note. I am not that simple-minded. All I am doing here is laying out the fact that the Bible does state that God created the world.

Now, about the world being created in six twenty-four hour days... you might be surprised at what I have to say about that.

What is a day? A day is twenty-four hours. How do we measure this? We measure it with respect to the time it takes the earth to make one revolution with reference to the sun: sunrise, morning, noon, afternoon, twilight, sunset, bedtime, midnight, and back to sunrise again.

While closely reading the Genesis text, I noticed this:

On Day One, God created light and separated the light from the darkness. He called them morning and evening, and that was the first day.

On Day Two, God said "Let there be an expanse," and He separated the waters from the waters and called the expanse Heaven (...if you are confused by this, so was I; just keep reading, please).

On Day Three, God separated the water from the earth and made dry land and seas. He told the earth to sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit.

On Day Four, God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night." He created the sun, moon and stars and placed them in their orbits, designing the patterns of their revolutions.

Wait a minute. God created the sun, moon and stars on Day Four.

So, if we measure a day based on the length of time it takes the earth to revolve one time with respect to the sun, what was a day before there was a sun? What were Day One and Day Two and Day Three?

A skeptic, an atheist, a person who is bent on not believing the Bible, finds ammunition right here in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible. This doesn't make any sense. Besides, how could plants grow and produce seeds and fruit before there was a sun to make them photosynthesize?

It all depends on what you are looking for. Are you looking to see what the Bible could teach you that is true? Or are you looking to see what you can complain about?

First, I have to admit that I do not see a Biblical mandate that God created everything in six twenty-four hour days. Could He have created everything in six twenty-four hour days? Of course! He is God, and He can do anything. I'm just not sure that we can claim that the Bible says He did.

Do you see what I am doing here? I am trying to separate what the Bible definitely says (that God created the world in six days) from something that we often claim the Bible says (that God created the world in six twenty-four hour days). The Bible might not say exactly what we have often interpreted it to say.

I am not advocating for evolution. We'll get to my skepticism about that theory at some point. I'm just saying that I don't think God paid much attention to ordering the way time could be measured prior to the fourth day of creation (when He made it one of the main items on His to-do list), so to insist on applying our current understanding of time-flow to the creation process seems to me rather simplistic and awkward.

God exists outside of time, and He was outside of time before He ever lifted a finger to create anything. We simply cannot bend our minds around the concept of existence outside of time. For us, to exist means to be born into a time continuum where one moment follows another and life is a string of consecutive events stretching from birth to death. We can think of the past, and we can think of the future, but we cannot imagine what it would be like to exist outside of all of it. God does exist outside of all of it, though. This is why He can tell us in His word that He knows the end from the beginning. He's on the outside, watching it all unfold simultaneously, except I probably expressed that all wrong because I can't really imagine what it would be like to be free and unbounded by time. Besides, He's on the inside, too, always.

Here's what I think: I think when Genesis 1:3 tells us that God said "Let there be light" and created light and darkness and separated them from each other and called them day and night, He was creating time. This would be the logical first step for Him to take in creating an environment in which humans could exist and live.

Following that, I think on the second day when God created the great expanse to separate the water from the water and called it Heaven... He was creating space.

Day One: time.

Day Two: space.

There you have it, the ubiquitous time-space continuum necessary for all life as we know it.

Day Three is a little trickier. The Bible says that God gathered the water into seas, made dry land and produced vegetation of all kinds. A literalist is now picturing lakes, rivers, valleys, forested hills and fields of wheat. But what do we know?

We know that the sun isn't going to be born until tomorrow (Day Four). And we know plants can't grow without sun.

Think back to what we have already seen God do: create time and space. If time is "step one" (and incidentally, I conjecture that it probably took God a lot less than twenty-four hours to create time... I imagine Him doing it in a single stunning, electrifying instant), and if space is "step two," what would be the logical third step? It seems to me that the logical third step would be to put something into the time and the space.

What would you put into time and space? Well, what about matter?

What if God created matter on Day Three, the elements of the periodic table, hydrogen and nitrogen and (naturally) carbon, as well as the rest of them? Maybe He even started forming some of the elements into molecules, inorganic and organic. The organic ones would soon become the foundation of plant life and even animal life. Well, a literalist may ask, why doesn't the Bible say that, then? Well, I would respond, because the elements had not yet been discovered at the time Moses was receiving the Word of God from the Lord on Mount Sinai. That kind of scientific knowledge was thousands of years in the future.

If you were God (a dangerous thing to try to imagine, but carefully try for just a moment), and you were giving a vision to a man of ancient times like Moses, a man who lived long before any scientific development (imagine this), and you were trying to explain to him that you had created matter on the third day of creation, what kinds of visions would you use to show him? He has to write something down, but what could he grasp, with the knowledge base that he has? Maybe you would show him water, rocks, minerals, and the plant life that would soon spring from these building blocks of nature which, on their own, are actually too tiny for the naked eye to see? Does that sound a little like what we read about in Genesis 1:9-13? Maybe?

Then on Day Four, God took that matter He'd brought into being on Day Three, and He made the Universe... stars, moons, planets and everything on them. People who study the stars say that they swirl around with meticulous, predictable precision out there. God designed it all, the way a watchmaker designs a very fancy watch, except infinitely bigger and infinitely more intricate.

On Day Four, God placed Earth at just the right distance from the sun, not too close and not too far away. He measured out just the right elements in the perfect ratios to make up the earth's atmosphere, and He poured water onto the earth to make it ready to support life. He let things begin to live and grow after the patterns He had created for them.

On Day Five God made fish, birds, insects and all the lower life forms.

On Day Six, God made mammals and humans, the higher life forms.

Given what we know about science, none of this seems the least bit implausible to me. It seems miraculously logical and orderly for a piece of writing that was transcribed approximately 3000 years before people had figured out anything about the scientific method or biological classification or chemistry. Just pointing that out.

I'm not saying that the way I explain things here is definitely the way things were. In fact, my husband, who loves physics, has an entirely different theory based on the way time is expanding and not a constant. I could be right. He could be right. Goodness, the literalists could be right. I don't think we will know exactly how creation happened until we get to heaven and ask God about it.

But no matter what, I believe that God is the Creator of all things.

to be continued