Death Dismissed

I think it perhaps to early in the morning to be thinking on death already. Were this a normal book and a normal approach to death, it would be too early. Thankfully, this is not a normal approach on death; rather it is a dismissal of it. 

Once we have grasped our situation in God's full world, the startling disregard Jesus and the New Testament had for "physical death" suddenly makes sense. Nothing like what is usually understood as death will happen to those who have entered his life. 

Congratulations! You are not going to die. At least not in the normal sense of ceasing to exist and having all of your thoughts, words, and actions suddenly turn into a meaningless, non-existent puff of smoke billowing away in the winds of history.

 Those who love and are loved by God are not allowed to cease to exist, because they are God's treasures. He delights in them and intends to hold onto them. He has even prepared for them an individualized eternal work in his vast universe.

I should pause at this point to address the concerns of some that you will actually have to work in Heaven. Or should I say you get to work? You get the opportunity to continue doing something meaningful, relevant, and rewarding for all of eternity. I think this a much better view on paradise than sitting atop a cloud staring at all the other people sitting on their clouds.


But that's not even the best part of the realization of Heaven. The fact that God has chosen, not been forced or coerced but chosen, to take you to a place he prepared especially for you from the dawn of your creation has to be uplifting to some degree. You are his treasured creation, and he loves you.

Or maybe it's not uplifting because maybe you deem it impossible. How could there possibly be a place better than here? How could God possibly create a paradise that doesn't get old or boring? How could I really get along with trillions of people when I can barely interact with a few family members here?

Those who think it is unrealistic or impossible are more short on imagination than long on logic. They should have a close look at the universe God has already brought into being before they decide he could not arrange for the future life of which the Bible speaks.

There are moments of goodness and glory here on earth, whether the sun setting on the horizon, the last few notes of an opera, or the joy of holding a newborn infant. If God created these, why cannot he create so much more than that?

So as we think of our life and make plans for it, we should not be anticipating going through some terrible event called "death," to be avoided at all costs even though it can't be avoided. Immersed in Christ in action, we may be sure that our life will never stop. 

We have arrived at the applicable portion of this chapter. If we believe in a God who is so great and awesome and glorious, and we believe he loves us and is going to continue our existence into eternity, then the way we live now should reflect the fact that we are going to live forever.

We should be anticipating what we will be doing three hundred or a thousand years from now in this marvelous universe. We are never ceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in the full world of God.

I must admit, this is beyond the scope of my imagination. I can barely think up what I want to do with my tomorrow much less my next millennium. But I think I can stop many of the worries that plague my day. What do I care if I don't get to the top of my career ladder by the time I'm 30? I'll do it in a thousand years when I get around to it. Why should I worry about experiencing every possible thing this world has to offer? I have a billion other planets to visit.

In other words, and going back to yesterday's posting, I should be concerned "with things above and not with things below." (Colossians) I should be concerned with the people in my life now, the opportunities I have been given, and the impact I can have where I'm at. I should not be focusing on getting ahead, after all, where am I in such a rush to get to?

Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, what you will eat or drink, for you have enough worries to get you through the day as it is." (Matthew 6:34) I believe this is the answer to Willard's question:
 

How should we take care of ourselves when we are never to cease?

Centrality of Will

I will begin this writing with a word of warning. If deep thoughts and high level thinking makes your brain hurt, you may choose simply to skip this passage and wait until I reach Chapter 4 of the book. What I am about to embark upon is not for the faint of heart, though it will certainly strengthen you who survive the onslaught of faith philosophy herein represented.


Still reading? Very well.

In response to Moses' question about who he is, God replies, "I am that I am" - a Being that exists totally from its own resources.

To understand this iota of fact about the nature of God's existence, we must have an understanding of what it means to exist. What does it mean for us to exist as humans?

According to French philosopher Descartes, we think therefore we are, but I posit that this in itself is not enough to warrant our existence as humans. A clock or computer could be programmed to run the same thought over and over, while containing no will to act whatsoever.

Every human being has a will. It is our inclination and capacity to act on our own and to produce what we find to be good. Because we have will we are not things. Without will we would have no life that is recognizably human.

As mentioned in earlier writings, part of being human is have dominion over some area of our lives. You can refer to this as free will or choice or whatever suits your fancy. The fact of the matter is, without the ability to make a decision and exert our influence into life, we are not, and cannot be defined as, human.

Why is this important? And why is this important to understanding God, which is the main focus of this chapter?

The heart, or will, simply is spirit in human beings, and it is the only thing in us that God will accept as the basis of our relationship to him. 

Because we can understand our own will, to some extent we can understand God's. God is the own being who exists by continuing to will himself into existence from moment to moment. We cannot do that, no matter how hard we try. Once we exist, we can do a great many things with our wills, one of which is relate to our God and creator. In the classical tradition, this is the meaning of the term "spirit".

Our spirits are central to our selves because, as I just argued, in a sense we are our spirits. That is to say, we cannot be human without them.

Because we are spiritual beings, it is for our good to live our lives in interactive dependence upon God and under his kingdom rule.

This may not seem like a logical next step, and in all fairness it is not, based solely on my short posting; however the book does a fair job of showing why, if we are not solely physical, but rather spiritual beings, we should need to survive by interacting with other spiritual beings in a spiritual world.

We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. Thus Paul warns us, "To fill your mind with the visible, the 'flesh', is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace." (Rom 8:6)

Your agreement with this statement will greatly depend on your agreement with the last three chapters of this book. For instance, you might spend hours debating whether God exists, whether Jesus' words were true, or whether such statements are fact or mere recommendation for good living. Or you could look at the fact that you have a will, a spirit. You know you have a will because you feel its pressing desires and wishes in the back of your mind on a daily basis. You feel it when you choose to be happy despite the circumstances or refrain from anger when it is the natural response.

We are spiritual beings just as a fish is an aquatic being and a bird an aerial being. Our natural habitat is in a spiritual world, though many of us choose not to live there. Like a bird willingly flying into a cage and locking the door behind, so also we fly from one thing to another, worrying about the results of our physical deeds as though they are the end-all-be-all of our existence.

But they are not. Realizing they are not is one of the first steps to living the eternal life now. You cannot experience life as God intended it if you continue to preach to him about things that only bring death. A bird who sings to you from inside its cage can never measure up to an eagle screeching down at you as it soars overhead.


As we increasingly integrate our life into the spiritual world of God, our life increasingly takes on the substance of the eternal.

Fly away, little birdie. 

Space Inhabited by God

If you pay attention to labels, you will notice that I have just skipped 10 pages. I may come back to them at some later point, but in all honesty, I wasn't inspired to write much from them, so I shall continue on in my journey.

Many say that God is not in space at all, but instead is "in" the human heart. And that sounds nice, but it really does not help. "In my heart" easily becomes "in my imagination." It gives us a pretty metaphor but leaves us vainly grasping for reality.


Where does God live? If you answer "heaven", then you should probably go back and read those last 10 pages of the book for a proper understanding of what we mean when we say "heaven." Or instead, how about rephrasing the question to, "Where is God when he is answering prayers?" Where is God when he is performing miracles? Where was God when he spoke out saying, "This is my Son whom I live. With him I am well pleased." (Matt. 3:17)


Does God sit on a cloud and throw down magic spells? Does he cast lightning bolts like Zeus or apparate and disapparate like Albus Dumbledore? These are the images we've seen, and so, I think, they are the ones that come easiest to mind. God is not someone we understand. Our mind dislikes gaps. It fills them with that which is understood or at the very least familiar.

Very well. Let us look at something that is familiar.

 Roughly speaking, God relates to space as we do to our body. He occupies and overflows it but cannot be localized in it. Every point in it is accessible to his consciousness and will, and his manifest presence can be focused in any location as he sees fit.

Simple, right? Okay, not so much. But at least it is better understood than picture an invisible something somewhere inside my cardiovascular region or my head. This metaphor compares God to me, much as God compared me to him when he said he created me in his image. (Genesis 1:26)

If God inhabits space as I inhabit my body, then he really is everywhere all the time, while not being pinpointed in any one location. For instance, I know I am in my feet and my hands and my head, while simultaneously not really being at any of those places at all. I am NOT my body. I am a consciousness and a will. I inhabit my body and am in complete control of it, but it is not me.

By Willard's example, God inhabits the universe in the same way. He's everywhere. He's in mountains and lakes and trees and people. He's also in stars and nebulas and galaxies and comets. He inhabits and exhibits his will from the farthest reaches to the closest corners. This is not in a "gaia" manner of saying that God is the mountains and the water and the trees. God is not his "body". He is not the universe; he merely inhabits it.

So we should assume that space is anything but empty. This is central to the understanding of Jesus because it is central to the understanding of the rule of God from the heavens, which is his kingdom among us. Traveling through space and not finding God does not mean that space is empty any more than traveling through my body and not finding me means that I am not here.

God is both among us and around us. When we pray, we talk to a friend next door as much as a Creator King. When God acts, he reaches out from around us, from his kingdom, and he enacts his will.

Ole Hallesby points out that the air our body requires envelops us on every hand. To receive it we need only breathe. Likewise, the "air" which our souls need also envelops all of us at all times and on all sides. God is round about us in Christ on every hand. All we need do is open our hearts.

Prayer requests should not be viewed as "snail mail to the clouds", as though we need wait for God to receive it and send back a response in due time. God hears us immediately. He most likely responds to us immediately, though often it takes us time to see his response.

I have not often struggled with this understanding of God, though I have ignored it when I haven't wanted to think of God's omni-presence. We learn about it in Sunday School, but we don't often realize it in our lives. We don't put it into practice. We lift our eyes to "heaven" when heaven is right in front of us. We shoot off prayers like Hail Mary passes (ironic, I know), as though we don't have much of a chance of getting through. Meanwhile, God stands right next to us and looks at us for our attention, many times hoping for a conversation more than a supplication.

We are his creations. He cares for us. He exists with us, and we with him.

Do we live our lives that way?
Is he real in the everyday?
I pray it is so,
and I know it, although,
I can't always live out what I say.

Finding Language to Express God

From the words of Adam Clarke,
God is...

The eternal,

independent,

and self-existent Being;

the Being whose purposes

and actions

spring from himself,

without foreign motive

or influence;

he who is absolute

in dominion;

the most pure,

the most simple, 

the most spiritual

of all essences;

infinitely perfect;

and eternally self-sufficient,

needing nothing

that he has made;

illimitable

in his immensity,

inconceivable

in his mode of existence,

and indescribable

in his essence; 

known fully

only by himself,

because an infinite mind

can only be fully 

comprehended by itself.

In a word,

a Being who,

from his infinite wisdom, 

cannot err

or be deceived,

and from

his infinite goodness,

can do nothing but

what is eternally just,

and right,

and kind.

Think of someone who's every action, whose slightest thought or inclination, automatically assumes the reality of the God here described. When you do this you will have captured nothing less than the thought of Jesus himself, along with the faith and life he came to bring.

Re-visioning God

While man is at home with animals and stars, he is also the cosmic neighbor of the Absolute.  ~Gustave Martelet

Three chapters into this book it is still as fresh and enlightening as the first page. I love a book that presents something new in each section while still being able to tie it together or at least build on previous thematic material. Nearly two months into this blog, and I do not regret a single moment spent on it. Even if no one reads a post, I obtain such a wealth of wisdom and understanding that I sometimes find myself writing far more than anyone would reasonable desire to read, and yet it still feels worthwhile.

Chapter 1 touched on the true message of Jesus, the one that pulpits everywhere ignore or downplay. Chapter 2 discussed the various means by which the gospel is misspoken. Chapter 3 starts breaking ground for construction of the gospel Christ spoke of and believed. It begins by re-visioning God.


Jesus' good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God's direct knowledge and control.

Great, I'm tracking so far. We need to believe in God in order to effectively believe in the message Jesus gave. God's in control, he made the world, and he's everywhere in it. That much I've always been told. But wait, there's more.

It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us. 


Say that again? Until we have found EVERY visible thing and event glorious with God's presence, Jesus' words have not yet fully seized us. I do not propose that he is saying we have to find every event glorious. Murder, rape, and thievery are awful things. However, he has definitely stated that every moment should be glorious because of God's continuing presence. Whether because of the event or despite it, Willard writes that God is in every moment of our lives, making each one glorious in some way, shape, or form. More on this later. In the mean time, back to God.


We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. 

I guess I've never really thought of it that way. I know I've experienced joy and exhilaration, just as I know I've experienced love and kindness and compassion. I already credit God as being the most loving and compassionate being, why not also the most joyful? I suppose my excuse would be that I often consider God's sorrow and God's anger and God's mercy because those come easily to mind from scriptures. But have I simply read over the accounts of when God rejoices in his creation? When in Genesis he declares all things "good", is he not saying he takes pleasure in them? 

Or maybe it goes deeper. Maybe I do not want to consider a joyful God, because maybe I do not want to be joyful. I'm perfectly fine being optimistic in life, but taking joy in every moment... that almost seems like a burden. Yet I know it is not. Intellectually I know that Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is also something God cares deeply about. It is a part of his image, even as righteousness and peace and kindness are. I desire to be like him; should I not put just as much effort into being joyful as I do into being loving and holy?


We are enraptured by a well-one movie sequence or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem. We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But God is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right.  That is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life.

Have you ever considered the life of God? Do you just assume that he sits up there somewhere above the clouds and constantly judges everything and everyone? Does he not take pleasure in his creation? In his creations? What is the life and existence of God? What does it entail? What composes his every moment? Perhaps these things are beyond our understanding. After all, who can really say how God experiences a moment? However, I would surmise that we can say God is joyful, for we know that, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights." (James 1:17) And we know that joy is good. Ergo, joy comes from God. Ergo, God possesses infinite amounts of joy. God is a joyous being.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never ending skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sovereign will.

~William Cowper

Not only are we given this wonderful description of God, but we also have a living image of him at work in Jesus Christ. Where does Jesus spend his time? Does he go careening around city after city calling judgment down on people and cringing at all the rule breaking? 

No. He spends his time at weddings and banquets and dinners. He goes walking with his friends and family. He goes sailing on lakes. He loves being around children. He engages with people everywhere. Sure, he has those moments where he's off by himself praying, or weeping for a lost one, or upset at the wrongness of the world. But these do not define his life. His life is a life of joy. And so is God's.

Out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core - which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word... love.

 

 

Integration of Life and Faith

Wrapping up chapter 2 today. Let's just jump right in.

So as things now stand we have, on the one hand, some kind of "faith in Christ" and, on the other, the life of abundance and obedience he is and offers. But we have no effective bridge from faith to life.

This has actually proved somewhat frustrating even in these last few months. Reading so much about the life of abundance that Christ offers, I have often found myself desiring access to it immediately. However, my years of history discovering Christ has not given me an automatic berth into living the eternal life now.

Granted, things have been improving. I see so much growth in myself even in the past two months, and especially in the last year, as though God has known all along the path down which he was leading me. Actually, that's probably quite an accurate statement.

Moving on.

If we have not been living the life eternal, what have we been living?

We settle back into alienation of our religion from Jesus as a friend and teacher, and from our moment-to-moment existence as a holy calling or appointment with God. Some will substitute ritual behavior for divine vitality and personal integrity; others may be content with an isolated string of "experiences" rather than transformation of character. Right at the heart of this alienation lies the absence of Jesus the teacher from our lives.

All other thoughts aside, he makes a valid point here. We love to cling to rituals and experiences in religion, as though these alone will solve our spiritual problems and make us closer to God. But the unfortunate thing about both of these is that they require little to no effort on our part. Think about it, the pastor hands out communion, asks you to rise, asks you to sit, sends you his blessing and on your way you go.

How can you, as a being of free will, come upon a new life of abundance if you never consciously will yourself to take some part in it? If all you do is go from church service to church service hoping to "feel" God's presence one of these days like you did that one time when you were a kid, then you are accomplishing no more than a child who throws a basketball haphazardly towards sky hoping that it will again land in the hoop as it once did.

Let's call this fictional child Rich. Rich likes basketball. He's heard of Michael Jordan. He likes to play it because his friends and family play it. He is enthusiastic about going out every day and throwing the basketball in a random "up" direction and waiting to see if it falls through the large open hole.

The only problem here is that Rich will not get any better as a basketball player, even though he performs all the same rituals as other players. He walks out to the hoop every day. He stands where they stand; he looks where they look. The ball is in his hands, then it is in the air. One time he makes it in, and he spends the rest of his life explaining to the friends that he must be a pretty good player to have made the ball in the hoop, just like they did.

Years will pass. Rich's friends will steadily be pursuing the sport of basketball and they will learn how to become better basketball players. They will advance in their teams and careers and go on to play in high school and college and coach their own children. Meanwhile, Rich will remain exactly where he started, still performing the same rituals and occasionally reliving his glorious experience of seeing the ball go into the hoop.

Now come back in from the land of basketball metaphors and understand that when I speak of Rich, I am actually speaking of the spiritually poor. They are many, and they are everywhere. Take a look at your own past, and you may find that you are one of them. God is real, but seemingly inaccessible. Friends and family members talk to you occasionally about what they are "learning" about God. This confuses you because, "Isn't God just a feeling? Isn't he just out there? Aren't you just supposed to do your thing every Sunday and he's happy enough not to interfere in your life?"

Maybe this isn't you. But I'll bet you know someone that fits the description pretty well. Most of these people know Jesus' name while being utterly clueless on what he said, did, or preached. He is not a teacher in their lives any more than Michael Jordan was a teacher for Rich.

The disappearance of Jesus as teacher explains why today in Christian churches little effort is made to teach people to do what he did and taught. We do not seriously consider Jesus as our teacher on how to live, hence we cannot think of ourselves as his students or disciples. So we turn to popular speakers and writers on matters that concern us. Jesus' invitation to eternal life now - right in the midst of work, business, and profession - remains for the most part ignored and unspoken. 


And so ends this highly depressing chapter on the current state of affairs. Before we exit this darkness into a brighter land, answer me these questions three, dare the other side you see.


1) Does the gospel you preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it o become full-time students of Jesus?


2) Would those who believe it become his apprentices as a natural "next step"?


3) What can you reasonably expect would result from people actually believing the substance of your message?




Think carefully about you answers before moving into the next chapter.

 

The Gospel on the Left

And now, once again, for something completely different.

At the opposite end of the theological spectrum stands a large number of ministers, priests, and congregations who take an entirely different view of what the issue is in the gospel. The gospel, or "good news," on this view, was that God himself stood behind liberation, equality, and community; that Jesus died to promote them, or at least for lack of them; and that he "lives on" in all efforts and tendencies favoring them.

A pretty quick summary of what roughly half the churches in the United States lean towards. One might even say my own church leans that way, since it quite adamantly does NOT lean to the right (see previous posts for summary). However, leaning left and leaning right are not the only two options available. We can always stand straight up, and we tend to rise higher when we do. This is my view of the direction my own church faces. It's the reason I go there, and will continue to go there, until I find a church that does an even better job of it; though I am skeptical to find such a place.

Let us carry on now where we left off.

The older liberal theology died and was resurrected in the form of a social ethic that one could share with people who had no reliance on a present God or a living Christ at all. Total inclusivism of all beliefs and practices except oppressive ones, such as the exclusivism of traditional Christianity, was the natural next step.

Love everyone no matter what their beliefs or practices and do so in the name of Christ. Christ showed people love by his dying, and we should do the same. In essence, the message of the Christian left is: Love Wins. Yes, I am quoting the title of the recently controversial book by Rob Bell, which I have read. It's actually quite good, as might well be imagined from something written with the objective to reveal the existence of God's love to all people.

However, in the same way that the "gospel of the right" takes the wonderfully good act of Christ's death and resurrection and lofts it up to the highest standard of the flag pole, so the "gospel of the left" does the same with Christ's love. Where once we had a foundational characteristic of Christ and Christians, now we have an ideal to want and to worship.

The real Jesus is "one who identified with and loves the oppressed people and those who are different," calling us to do the same.These words express the redemptive vision of the Christian left. But there is a problem with the precise nature of redemptive love. In this world where there are so many things called love, which love is it that is God?

A fair question. Why are we worshiping a difficult-to-define characteristic of God rather than God himself? Why focus on the love of God over the justice or mercy or righteousness or holiness or faithfulness or mightiness or creativeness or timelessness of God? Is this the view that we have of Jesus' life?

True, he did say, "A new command I give to you, love one another." (John 13:34) He also said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus commands quite a bit of love from us. It seems to be of great importance.

But we're missing a key point here. Just as salvation by faith begins or starts the Christian walk, so a life characterized by love is a natural conclusion to becoming a Christian. One produces Christianity, the other follows from it. In neither case does either define it. And that is the crux of the issue.

Which is better, to build your life starting on the second story of a building (any building) or to lay the foundation for your life on solid ground and never start building? In once case you have great potential. In the other you have ungrounded and unguided progress. In a trustworthy building, one step should natural progress to another to produce a completed work ready to stand the test of time. But we live in a society of shortcuts and limitations. Willard ties it up quite nicely in the following:

Could we have a bumper sticker that reads, "Christians aren't perfect, just committed to Liberation"? Quite possibly. The current gospels exhibit the very same type of conceptual disconnection from the personal integrity of believers. 

And both lack any essential bearing upon the individual's life as a whole. They concern sin guilt or structural evils (social sins) and what to do about them. That is all. Overall abundance of life and obedience to moral standards that we all know to be valid have no inherent connection to the gospels of sin management. Being "right" or "left" makes no difference on this basic point.

 Okay. We seem to have gone backwards from our kingdom living into our kingdom stagnating, but now that we've identified where we are actually starting, perhaps we can now move forward. Before, the eternal life we witnessed before us was trapped by misinformation and misdirection. We liked the idea of it, but our current "gospels" prevented us from actually believing that it could or did exist.

Let us brush aside our preconceptions and focus on finding the true gospel that Jesus spoke. It's time to knock down our poorly constructed and right/left leaning views of Christ and start building anew from a solid and fresh foundation.This is my goal today, tomorrow, and everyday after as we continue to traverse the pages of The Divine Conspiracy. Until next time, I bid you good reading.