Two Things

I know there are a lot of two things in the world, but this post is about two things that a girl should never tell a guy when she doesn’t want to go out with him.

Thing 1) “You’re like a brother to me.”  Now girls I know that you might think that this is a really nice thing to tell the guy, but this is one of the worst things to tell him.  “Why do you say that?”  You ask.  Because with that phrase you’re really saying, “I really enjoy the time we spend with one another and you are a great person to talk to, but there is just something about you that is annoying and repulsive that causes me not to want to spend more time with you.  If you were to get that fixed we can talk.”  Either that or you are totally inviting incest upon yourself and I’m pretty sure the Bible has something to say about that.

Thing 2) “I don’t feel like God is leading me into this relationship.”  The guys thought?  “Great not only am I being rejected by you, but now God is rejecting me.”  I don’t think God told you to reject the guy, this is just an easy out.  “Blame it on God.  Can’t argue against that.”  Unless of course the guy pulls out the theological card.  “What theological card is that?”  That God can’t contradict himself.  I mean if God told the guy to ask you out then you said God told you to turn him down God would be contradicting himself.  OK so guys don’t say God told you to ask her out and girls don’t blame it on God.  Fair enough?

“The Practice of Godliness” by Jerry Bridges

This has to be one of my favorite books I’ve read to review.  There are very few pages in this book that has no marks.  Most of the pages have underlined sentences, bracketed paragraphs, or marginal notes.  Bridges has written a book that will convict, encourage and grow the believer from beginning to the end.  Bridges definition for godliness is “Devotion to God that results in a life that is pleasing to Him.”  A visual picture he shows is that of a triangle with “Devotion to God” in the center, “Desire for God” at the top and “Fear of God” and “Love for God” at the bottom corners.  (I’ve tried to Illustrate this to the right.)  One thing that really caught me off guard is that godliness isn’t characteristics.  Before I read this book I would have explained a person that has the “Fruit of the Spirit” as being godly.  While it’s true that a godly person with act like that, that is not what makes them godly. 

This is all I’m going to mention about the book, but I could go on for hours about this book.  For those looking for a great read, pick this up.  If you choose to get this book, get the study guide with it.  The study guide will draw out other things that Bridges doesn’t mention.  Since I mentioned the study guide I’m going to say this was the best study guide for a book I’ve used.  I say this because most authors, when writing the study guide, use the bible to support their ideas.  You use the guide after you finish the reading.  Instead, Bridges uses his ideas to support the Bible.  What I mean is Bridges sends the reader to the Bible and then the reader reads the chapter(s).  This really has been a pleasure to read and would recommend this to anyone no matter their length of relationship to Christ.

I Received this book for free for the purpose of reviewing.

Altruism

Altruism is defined as “the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.”  This has been a subject I have been pondering for a little while now and while more philosophical at the heart I do believe it is necessary for any type of evangelical discussion.  Proverbs 21:2 says that “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.”  When we were unbelievers we thought we were good people.  Most people when asked if they are good people would immediately proclaim their own righteousness.  “Yes” would be their immediate answer and when asked for specific examples they could easily come up with ways in which they have done some great thing for their community or for a group they support.  “I haven’t murdered anyone.”  “I’ve never robbed a bank.”  “I volunteer my time at AAA”  Then when asked why that makes them good they could easily point to people that they are better than.  “My next door neighbor doesn’t help in the community.”  “There are jails filled with people who are worse than I am.”  And these excuses can go on all day.  With God outside of the picture anyone, except for Adolf Hitler, could be good.  Well, even Hitler could be somewhat good.  I mean the man wouldn’t kill his mother, so he even had a portion of goodness in his life. 

People will continually bank on their goodness to get to the paradise they think they should receive.  Whether it’s the Muslim following the five pillars of Islam to get to paradise, the Buddhist monk following the four noble truths and the eightfold path, the Catholic hoping that they don’t commit too many carnal sins so that they can go to Heaven or not wait so long in purgatory, or the person attending church that was baptized at a young age hoping that if they go to enough services and because of their baptism they can gain favor with God and be let into heaven.  Time and time again I see this Proverb being true.  People when looking from their own eyes will say they are right. 

Back to the subject at hand, from a postmodern standpoint, altruism is perfectly possible especially within the context of a religion because most religions promote peace and selflessness.  Yet, when we open the Bible it gives a completely different understanding of the human race.  We are told that the human race is wicked, evil, not good, not righteous, not holy and that the heart of mankind is deceitfully wicked above all things, that no one understands.  Which means that if I am trying to be altruistic I cannot be.  There is no middle ground according to the Bible.  Either a person is good or they are not.  Even if I am trying to be altruistic I cannot be because I am still the source of my selflessness.  When I try to help people, my help is not selfless because I am still getting something out of it.  What are am I gaining out of helping someone who is helpless?  I am gaining the satisfaction in my own eyes that I am a good person.  I am feeling good about myself because I have helped someone that couldn’t help themselves.  Is this true altruism?  I think not.  Especially with the definition I gave at the beginning.  Instead, this is reciprocity.  Reciprocality is given or felt by each toward the other.  “I scratch your back.  You scratch mine” mentality.  Is altruism possible because up to this point it seems like it’s not?

There is a good and a bad answer.  The good news is that it is not only possible to be altruistic.  The bad news is that not only can we be altruistic it is commanded for us to be altruistic.  “What?!?!?!”  I can already hear the cries.  “How am I supposed to be altruist?”  “You said  my heart is deceitfully wicked above all things that no one even understands how wicked I am and yet I am supposed to be altruistic?”  “How is that even possible?”  To begin with we cannot be altruistic in and of ourselves.  In order to be completely altruistic we have to have something or someone to which we are dedicating our altruism.  But it’s not enough to dedicate just to dedicate or to gain something or else that defeats the purpose of altruism.  The only way any action can be truly altruistic is if the item or person we are dedicating our altruism to is deserving of the altruism and is enabling our altruism.  “Wait, you said item.   How can an item enable altruism?”  It can’t.  Therefore we can conclude that inanimate objects cannot be something to which we dedicate our altruism because inanimate objects can neither be altruistic nor enable altruism.  So, our altruism must be dedicated to someone.

For instance, say a mother with four kids, one of them is a baby about 18 months, is at Panera Bread.  They have their drinks and haven’t yet received their food.  While waiting one of the children spills their drink all over the table.  Say I immediately jump up to help with the mess.  I go and grab about a hundred napkins and begin to sop up all of the mess.  If I dedicate my altruism to myself and my motive is for me to receive something from that action it is not altruistic.  For example, if my motive is for the end result of feeling good about myself, that is selfish and therefore makes the action reciprocal and therefore not altruistic.  If my motive is for the end result is to gain favor in the eyes of God, my action is reciprocal and therefore not altruistic.  If my motive of the end result is for favor within the eyes of not only the mother, but those around the table and all the people I tell about my “altruistic” action, my action is reciprocal and therefore not altruistic.  So, I cannot dedicate my altruism to myself because I gain something in the end. 

Nor can my altruism be dedicated to someone to which I owe a debt.  If this were the case then altruism would be possible because we would be paying off a debt we owe to someone with our selflessness.  So this cannot be the case because we tend to gain something in the end.  Therefore this is reciprocality and not altruism.  What if I dedicate my altruism to the person to which I am helping?  That would go against what I previously said because the person you are helping is not enabling the altruism.  They are enabling you to which altruism is shown, but not to altruism itself.  Altruism is not the action that takes place, instead it is the “unselfish concern.”  So, no we cannot dedicate our altruism to the person to which we are helping.  “So who are we to dedicate our altruism and what causes this altruism?”  Grace is what causes altruism in a persons life and we dedicate our altruism to God because He enables us to be altruistic. 

God is infinitely morally perfect.  He is perfect in many other ways, but I am going to focus on his perfect morality.  God is so holy that he cannot be around sin, He cannot even look at sin.  We have all sinned.  At some point in our lives, whether you want to admit it or not, we have done something with the intent to make much of ourselves.  In making much of ourselves and not God, no matter the action, is sin and separates us from God.  Earlier when I said infinitely morally perfect I mean that God’s perfect morality was infinitely before he created the world and will continue forever.  Our morality is not infinite.  Our morality began as late as our birth, but really began with Adam in the garden.  Paul says that because of one man (Adam) our sin entered the world and death came because of sin.  So Adam started this chain of us placing ourselves on the number 1 spot in our lives and therefore causing us to rebel against God.  Now when he sinned his sin was a finite sin against an infinitely holy God.  his caused our debt to God to be that of an infinite debt because in order to gain perfection we would not only have to never do anything bad again, but all of our actions would have to be completely altruistic.  Which is not possible because we would be being altruistic because of a debt we owed therefore making it reciprocal. 

OK so this is how sin entered the world.  Fast forward a couple of thousand years and enter Jesus.  Jesus was completely altruistic because His life was spent on not himself, but on helping others and dedicating His altruism to God.  This brings up a few questions.  Wasn’t Jesus God?  Absolutely.  Then wouldn’t He be dedicating his altruism to Himself?  Absolutely.  But wouldn’t that go against what you said in paragraph 5?  Not at all.  Why?  Because in being God, Jesus was both infinitely altruistic and infinitely egoistic.  God is all about His glory.  Everything God does is so that in the end He will be glorified.  Jesus, was all about the Father’s will.  Jesus was completely selfless in His entire ministry on earth, but His selflessness was for God’s glory.  This is not an oxymoron, or a false dichotomy.  So Jesus was infinitely altruistic in everything he did on earth.  He was crucified on a cross for the sins of the world.  In His sacrifice His perfection, if we accept Him is transferred to us making us perfect in the sight of God. 

Grace is giving a person something they don’t deserve.  When we accept the give of forgiveness of God from the sacrifice of Jesus God has shown us grace by allowing us to use Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins.  We went from being enemies of God to not only friends, but sons and daughters of God.  Our entire past, present and future sins are forgiven.  Because of grace we no longer owe anything to God, so when we are altruistic we are not paying our debt off.  Also, we are not trying to gain a better position in Heaven, so when we are altruistic we are not gaining anything.  Instead, when we are altruistic we are showing the grace that we have already been shown.  Not to the extent to which it was shown, but a small portion. 

All in all is altruism possible?  Yes, but only because of the sacrifice of Jesus and his altruism can we even think about having an altruistic attitude towards others.

Please if you have any comments or concerns please either email me or comment below.  These are just my thoughts out loud and I in no way want to be misleading.

Worship

I was recently approached by someone asking about worship.  They mentioned they have no respect for a speaker because when they “preach” they talked about themselves and the worked that they have accomplished “for the kingdom.”  This, of course, prompted me to think about worship and who is in charge of our “worship experience.”  Is it the speaker, music, ourselves or God?  The term worship is mentioned 181 times in the English Standard Version (ESV) which is the translation I use more often than not.  That’s quite a few times.  There are a few words (more than 10) to mean worship and they show what true worship looks like.  Four in the Hebrew and six in the Greek.  The following is a basic list of the different words for worship.  The first part is the Strong’s number.  “H” is for Hebrew and “G” is for Greek.  The next part is the actual word.  In the parenthesis is a phonetic spelling of the word.  Finally, is the definition of the word.

 

H7812 – שׁחה  (shâchâh[shaw-khaw'])  To Prostrate

H6440 – פּנים (pânı̂ym [paw-neem'])  To Favor/Face

H6087 -  עצב (‛âtsab [aw-tsab'])  To be sorry, vex, displease, grieve

H5457/H5456 – סגד (sâgad [saw-gad'])  To Fall Down/To Prostrate

 

G4352 (G4314 and G2965) – προσκυνέω (proskuneō [pros-koo-neh'-o])  To kiss, like a dog licking Master’s Hand

G4576 – σέβομαι (sebomai [seb'-om-ahee]) To Adore

G1391 – δόξα (doxa [dox'-ah])  Praise, Honor, Glory

G3000 – λατρεύω (latreuō [lat-ryoo'-o])  To Minister, Render Religion Homage

G2151 – εὐσεβέω (eusebeō [yoo-seb-eh'-o]) To be pious towards God, To Respect, Show Piety

G1479 (G2309 and G2356) – ἐθελοθρησκεία (ethelothrēskeia [eth-el-oth-race-ki'-ah])  Arbitrary and Unwarranted Piety

 

Worship in English is “love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess; venerate as an idol;”

 

With all of that being said, we see that worship is something that we do towards God, but who initiates it?  The four “characters” I am going to address, that I mentioned at the beginning, are the Speaker, Music Leader, Ourselves and God.

Many people place the sole responsibility of worship on the speaker of the time.  Whether it’s the Pastor of their church or a speaker at a conference.  I understand it this way because I constantly hear the phrase “I didn’t really get anything out of the service.”  Yes, the speaker should be speaking truth and teaching that will draw one into worship, but it is not their responsibility to create worship in your heart.  If this were the case in Titus and both Timothy’s we would see this as a qualification as a Pastor/Elder or Teacher. 

The next person in the music person whether it’s the Music Pastor at your church or a “Worship Leader” or music group.  Yet, another group of people would say that these people lead in worship because “The music makes me feel more worshipful!”  But while music may make one feel more worshipful it isn’t necessarily worship.  Yes, one is worshipping, but is it the music person’s responsibility to create an attitude of worship?  I would say no for the same reasons as a pastor.  It is not a qualification for a leader.

Now we are left with two, but I will respond with one answer.  Worship in that which God initiates and man responds.  I am sure most reading this are familiar with Ephesians 5:22ish in which Paul is addressing roles of spouses and paralleling that to Christ and the church.  God ultimately initiated our response by predestining us to Heaven, but even more recent Christ died for the church initiating our response to worship God for His glory and majesty and we should praise him for that. 

No matter what songs are sung, no matter what the speaker talks about we should worship God because of who He is and what He has done.  Yes, the speaker may have done some magnificent things, but he was only able to accomplish those things because of what God is doing through him/her.  I know this is a short blog on a massive subject.  I hope that this has made sense as an overview.

Robots, AI and God. Oh My!

I subscribe to a blog called “The Big Picture” which is a picture blog by Alan Taylor from Boston.com.  This blog is a way to see the world from the eyes of another person and to see just how God works.  Today’s pictures were about robots and there were robots from Japan, Iraq, the US.  The types of robots ranged from Artificial Intelligence (AI), to vehicles, to weaponry.  The thoughts and ideas these people had to come up with these robots are incredible.  And theses people spent so much time in creating, planning and building these machines.

The major thing that struck me were the AI Robots (specifically those in pictures 1, 5, 12, 19, 22 23,28,33,35, and 36).  These people have put so much time and effort into creating something into a someone.  This definitely caused me to think of my maker.  He created this world in 6 days.  He created Adam in less than a day.  I was in His thoughts before He created the world.  Psalm 139:13 says, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”  He gave me a heart, a brain, lungs, kidneys, everything and He wants to have a relationship with me.

Robots are incapable of having relationships.  They are incapable of feeling emotions.  They are incapable of understanding sarcasm.  They will in no way ever be able to be human and yet I am a human.  God created me to display His glory and to delight in Him.  Just as these people created these robots to display their glory so their glory displays God’s.  This is just something that was on my mind that I wanted to share.

Love

The title of this blog is something that we, as Christians, are very familiar with. We get that phrase throughout the Bible, but we see that exact phrase when John says “God is Love” in 1 John 4:8. The question I will try to answer in this blog post is what type(s) of love God, Christians and Unsaved are.

You may be asking at this point, “What does he mean by types?” Well, in the Greek culture there are three forms of love. I will give the Greek word and a definition of the word. After I have given the explanation of the word I will then give an interpretation of what the words mean. I am not a scholar and I have not been in school all of my life, so if I say anything that does not agree with the Bible please let me know, so that I can remove this post from my blog. This post is only my thoughts on the subject.

αγαπη – (ag-ah-pay) “love, that is, affection or benevolence” [1]

φιλεω – (fil-eh-o) “to be a friend to (fond of [an individual or an object]), that is, have affection for (denoting personal attachment, as a matter of sentiment or feeling;”[2]

ερως – (er-rose) (this form is not in a dictionary as a verb rather it is the noun of Eros the Greek God, so I will give my own definition) “This type of ‘love’ does not worry about the other person involved, rather they take everything from that person.

αγαπη– Giving 100% of the love no matter the person, no matter the past, present, or future. The “I will love you always”

φιλεω – Give 50% / Take 50% this is the brotherly/friendship love. The “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours type”

ερως – Take 100% irregardless of the party involved. Most of the time used sexually, but the sexual has a deeper reasoning than just sexual. This is the “Give me everything you have and I will give you nothing in return. My use of this term in this blog with is used as just this; there will be no sexual connotation used with this word.

With all of this being explained I will now begin the controversy. I will begin with applying each love to the three groups of people. I will begin with the unsaved, move to the saved and finish with God. I will be using the English transliteration of the word (i.e. agape rather than αγαπη) Without further distractions I will begin with my game plan my nine major points.

Sinners                                Saved                          God

Are Eros                              Cannot be Eros           Is Eros

Think they are Phileo         Are Phileo                   Cannot be Phileo

Cannot be Agape                Should be Agape         Is Agape

As stated before I will begin my explanation with sinners. The first form of love I attached to them was the Eros for and I will begin my explanation with that. The reason I believe they are Eros is because they don’t realize who their maker is; they don’t realize that their very life and breath comes from God. Instead, they continue to take from God without giving Him credit for anything. Every human being has been in this boat in their life. Whether a person is a Christian or unsaved they have been in this boat because we are depraved human beings.

In Psalm 51 David says that he was conceived in sin. Of course who could for get the words of Jesus when he said “You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” Romans 14:23 says that whatever we do outside of faith is sin. With this being said this shows that unsaved people are the Eros form of love.

The second phrase “Sinners think they are the Phileo form of love. People, especially those that believe in a God just not the one of Christianity, think that the things they do, whether good or bad, will gain (or lose) their spot in Heaven. Even for people that don’t believe in a god they believe that if they do something the cosmos will look on their kindness and something good will happen to them. It would be something like karma that they would believe in.

The last phrase about sinners would be that they cannot be Agape. The place the Agape form was coined was in the Bible. It is used about 135 times when the New Testament talks about love. The other form is used about 20 times. Every time the Agape form is used is in reference to Christians and it is because God is dwelling in us that give us the ability to love others with Agape.

The second group I will be writing on is Christians. I began with saying that Christians cannot be the Eros form of love. We, as Christians, cannot be the Eros form of love because God dwells in us. If we, after “getting saved,” demand and take things from people, proves that we weren’t saved to begin with. Jesus says we should “love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us.” We should love everyone because we have been forgiven of so much.

The second phrase was that Christians are Phileo love. We have been forgiven of so much and because of this we now show love to everyone, but because of our sin nature we don’t love correctly. We are grateful to God for everything He has given us, but we still feel in our hearts that “If I Read my Bible everyday. Then God will bless me with wealth” or “If I stay pure until I am married then God will appease me and give me a wife when I ask for one.” God is not a dog that you toss your bone at and he brings it back to you. I will explain more about this when I get to God and Phileo.

The last phrase I used was that Christians should be Agape form of love. I dare say that not one person reading this could say they have the Agape form of love. I am not saying this out of pride because I am far from Agape, but this is what we should all strive to be. We should all strive to love and pray for our enemies. Not because if we do that we earn our salvation or that God will do good things for us, but because God has done so much for us that we can’t help but to love those around us no matter what they’ve done to us.

On the list I gave towards the top I said that God was Eros, but before I explain that I want to explain the other two.

The second phrase I mentioned was that God cannot be Phileo. If God were this way He would be this way for everyone. He would not do this out of love, but out of His equality. Instead, we see that Christians ask for things and He may or may not answer it the way we ask for it. If God has Phileo love then when we would scratch His back; He would scratch ours because he would be compelled to.

The third phrase I used was God is Agape. God loves us no matter what we did, are doing, or will do. He loves us completely and totally with no questions asked. That’s why John said “God is love (Agape).” We see this through the entire life of Jesus up until His death on the cross.

The first phrase that I saved for last was God is Eros. One could ask “Is that not a contradiction from what you said in the previous paragraph about God being Agape?” “Isn’t Eros the opposite of Agape?” To which I would answer “Hold your horses I will answer these and many other questions you may have including ‘Has he lost his mind?’”

To begin with God is Eros because of how He is viewed in the Bible. On multiple occasions we see that we are “servants,” but this isn’t necessarily the case. The word “servant” comes from the Greek word δοῦλος (doulos) which should be translated “slave.” Which means when God says “Well done my good and faithful servant”, He is really saying ‘slave,’ so, we are God’s slaves. If we are the slaves and he is the Master we have nothing. When we come to Christ we are nothing. After we come to Christ we are still nothing. God takes everything we “have” because of His love for Himself.

This is what is so great! God gives us everything He demands from us. Let that sink in. Before we come to Christ we are nothing. After we come to Christ God gives us everything He demands from us even though we are nothing. If God demands everything of our nothing then that makes God look so great because He is providing everything He is demanding. God demands we have faith in Him; He gives us that faith. God demands we love our enemies; He gives us that love to love our enemies. God demands that we have self-control; and He gives us that self control. How amazing is that! That is like the IRS saying you owe $100,000 in back taxes; then turning around and giving you a check for $100,000.

I am not setting any of this in stone because my opinion can change. This is research that I have done and hypotheses that I have come up with.

[1] Strong, James. “αγαπη” Def. 26. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. 1984. 7.

[2] Strong, James. “φιλεω” Def. 5363. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. 1984. 75.

Sovereignty

How do you explain His sovereign control in our lives when so many things happen that we have no control over and do not understand?   

I was reading something and it had the question “What do you understand about His providence?”  And the answer was fantastic.  It said “Providence is the almighty and ever present power of Him by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty – all things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but from His fatherly hand”  Yes, this doesn’t completely answer why He does these things, but it can give us some insight on why.  Of course we know that He has all of the hairs on our head numbered.  And we know that a sparrow won’t fall from the sky without his guidance and knowledge, so how much more does He care about us?

 

As for why God brings people home that are willing to go to the very depths for Him I don’t know why.  I can speculate it is because those people are the ones that are willing to do everything for Him and He knows there is nothing more for them to do.  If He kept all those people here on earth we wouldn’t need to train up new people to take their place.  If everyone lived until they were old we wouldn’t need to do anything more.  We would train people every 20 years to take the previous persons place.  That’s about the only way I can explain it at this point with such a little amount of time to read and study on the subject.  Please email me back and I hope I can explain it a little better in the next few days.

Blue Like Jazz

I’ve been reading Blue Like Jazz for the past week and it is a completely fascinating book.  Donald Miller has written a memoir of his life, up to the point when the book was published, and his “Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” make sense.  It is the first book I could sit down and read two chapters from different ends of the book and not miss a beat.  He makes quite a few great points in the book and the exerpt I’m going to type I’ve been told, but it never made sense until I read it in BLJ.  To set up the scene Don and his friend Paul are talking about marriage.

“So marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”  Don asked

“No, it is so much more than I ever thought it would be.  One of the ways God shows me He loves me is through Danielle, and one of the ways God shows Danielle He loves her is through me.  And because she loves me, and teaches me I am lovable, I can better interact with God.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously.  And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he cannot accept who God is; a Being that is love.  We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people,” Paul says.  That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”

Are we showing the love of Jesus Christ to each other to prove that they are lovable and therefore God loves them or do we blow them off and show God is not capable of loving them?  God does love them, but are you showing it?