I think that very few people know what they ask for when they pray to be set afire.  Light the fire in my soul… bring the fire of Your Spirit… let Your all-consuming fire come.

All.  Consuming.

When God brings the fire, it doesn’t mean that you jump up and down during worship or even that your prayers are intense enough to melt the snow where you kneel.  And it doesn’t mean that you feel like taking the leap and you mention God to that weirdo in the cubicle next to yours.

It means that everything you are is God’s… and everything you are is being used by God.  It’s not burning both ends of the rope – it’s burning the entire rope at once.

But still, God does not let the bush wither.

Stomach flu is my lifetime nemesis.  I haven’t gotten it for five years (maybe I built up an immunity to food poisoning during my dorm years), but it’s always the same.  I wake up feeling weak and confused early in the morning.  Around three in the morning it starts, and then I’m owned.

So this morning I must have upchucked on seventeen different trips.  Trips and not times – I did not count the multiples.  Which they all were.  I could not fall back asleep, because fifteen minutes later, like clockwork, I’m hovering over the commode.

My body shook, and I had to hold in a hernia tear and everything.  I wasn’t sure if my stomach lining or a lung or my heart would go first.  Today was fun.  But around two in the afternoon I started to hold down Sprite, and then I graduated to a few corn flakes, just so I wouldn’t pass out.

I cried out to the Lord many times.  I want to share a couple stories:  One about when I was weak, and one about when I was strong.

During my Junior year of high school, the conference meet for track and field was going to be the highlight of my year.  I had already busted open so many different records, and finally I would be able to stick it to that Waubonsie hurdler and my Nequa and St. Charles East rivals.  And my family and girlfriend would be there and everything was going to be glorious.

But I got this here stomach flu on Friday, and conference was on the following Monday.  Plus, because of district rules, I had to go to practice on Saturday or I would not be able to run.  My flu started to fall apart, and degenerated into a nasty fever and cold, and I was completely miserable for a long time.

I ran on fumes during Saturday’s practice, handkerchief in one hand and praying with my other that the Advil would stay down, and Monday finally came.

I won three individual events and ran a leg in our second-place 4×400 team.  I made personal records in two of the individual events and my split for the relay.  Then I went home and died.

The second story, where I feel strong, was rather recent and I’m hesitant to share because (a) nobody will believe me and (b) it can be pretty self-glorifying.

When I was a leader on my church’s West Virginia mission trip, I worked at this shelter/food pantry/goodwill store.  Oddly, the task of the week was to take 80lb bales of clothing and put them into a larger, industrial baler.  It was ridiculous.

The guy I worked with must have been sixty.  He was a heavy smoker named Harry who would occasionally slice the clothing with his razor blade while opening the smaller bales.  He reminded me of my Grandfather (not just because his name was Harry, but he was a tough, blue collar guy).  Anyway, we opened the small bales, loaded the larger baler with anywhere from fifteen to twenty two small bales, wrapped them in long pieces of wire, compacted the large bale, slip-knotted the wires, and then rolled the finished product onto a pallet (as much as you could roll a cube).  He told me never to go behind this pallet, because if the momentum we used to roll the cube of clothing happened to continue, I could very well be crushed.

Harry and I worked our butts off the first day, and we did pretty well considering he was just showing me the ropes.  I got a few compliments because I caught on quickly and refused to take a break (even though it must have been ninety-five degrees outside).  The second day, Harry’s normal help was back (another older man, perhaps fifty), along with a few new recruits that were much bigger than me.  Like a hundred fatty pounds heavier and a couple inches taller.  They were local guys who were unemployed and wanted to do something good with their spare time.

So while Harry’s normal help was taking a break, Harry deferred to the larger guys.  A logical choice, considering they had longer volunteer spans than I.  My job became to throw out waste and reload the wires.  Once in a while, I got to load the smaller bales onto our human-powered assembly line.

Anyway, the younger guys were going at the small bales real quick, and we all worked up a sweat, but then the time came to again roll the larger bale about three quarters of a turn onto the pallet.  One of the larger guys fumbled the pass coming out of the baler, and all of a sudden the crew lost all forward progress, and the bale started coming back down.  The local guys freaked and dropped it, perhaps afraid because Harry had given them the same warning he told me.

Harry got pinned.  His knee twisted in on itself, and he started to go down.  I was in the position to hand off the smaller bales to the big guys, so I was close, and I jumped in under the middle of the bale and put it on my shoulders, compacting myself into the fetal position.  I screamed like I had never screamed before, and I flat-out raised the one half ton bale of clothing until Harry could get out, and rolled it the final turn onto the pallet.

Harry took the rest of the day off, and he came back the next day with absolutely zero damage to his knee.

God did three extraordinary things:  He put me at the right place and time, blessing my instincts to get in before Harry’s leg was completely under; He used a man with torn ligaments in his knee to roll that bale; and He healed Harry’s knee.

I think God is great; take it or leave it

With the Cubs season long gone and the Bears eagerly awaiting to join the ranks of the under-performing, I take solace in the Chicago Bulls.

I’d love to reminisce about the die hard nature of my fan-dom, but I think I’m going to point out something interesting about this particular Chicago Bulls team:  The three captains.

The three captains are Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, and Lindsey Hunter.  If the rumor mills are of any indication, they were all not necessarily going to be Bulls this year.  Hinrich and Deng were on the trading block, and Hunter is a veteran journeyman.  While Deng could quite possibly regain his former consistency, it is interesting to me that two bench players and one injury-ridden player are the captains of the young Bulls.

I think it says a lot about what could happen if the season does not go well:  We could lose either the athletes rostered for talent or leadership.

I just confirmed that, through the combined efforts of controlling my posting frequency and choosing tags, I can manipulate my ‘hits’ graph to look like any roller coaster or mathematical function I so desire.

Booya

In other news, my small group is doing praise night (skits), and, depending on whether or not I have a large role, my posting will decrease or increase.

And my iPod is corrupted.  Shucks

See y’all.

When a person is the captain and selecting the members of a sports team from among his or her peers, he or she will pick, all other categories being equal, a friend over a stranger.  When one receives two birthday gifts, although we claim it’s the thought that counts, one is almost certainly more valued than the other.  When the decision of who gets a raise is before the boss, if one person’s personality rubs him or her the wrong way (for no particular reason), that employee is much less likely to get the raise.

Like it or not, we are sinful beings and we play favorites all the time.  Even one with a powerful guiding principle of fairness will at some point be subject to favoritism.  But is God like this?  Does He look with favor upon one person, just for the heck of it?  If two people truly come to Him, will God judge one of them more harshly because of a troubled past?  The following passages seem to say both yes and no:

GE 4:4-5 God prefers Abel’s offering and has no regard for Cain’s.
2CH 19:7, AC 10:34, RO 2:11 God shows no partiality. He treats all alike.

Is God playing favorites?  If two brothers give gifts to their Father, will God like one more because He likes the older brother more?  The younger brother?  If Cain and Abel give gifts to God, does He accept Able’s simply because He likes the smell of meat?  What’s going on?

Again, as in so many of these ‘contradictions,’ I am finding that they hinge on the isolation of proof-verses.

Romans 2:11 clearly states that God shows no favoritism.  Every person who obeys the law will be favored by God; Jew or Greek.  But elsewhere in the Bible, some people are judged more strictly than others.  James 3:1 says that all teachers will be held to a higher standard.  Luke 12:48 (in conjunction with Romans 3:1-2), says that since we have been entrusted with the very words of God, much more will be expected of us.

Taking all of these things into account, it is clear that Romans 2:11 is not saying that God expects [numerically] equal sacrifice from everyone, but, rather, equal sacrifice with respect to ability and talent.  It is not necessarily a percentage or tithe, but, as Matthew 13:45-46 says, it is everything we have ; as Romans 12:1 says, it is all of us; Exodus 22:29-30 says, it is to hold back nothing – not even your family

How is this act of sacrifice to God symbolized (especially in the Old Testament)?  By the giving of firstfruits.  Firstfruits are the first things that come off the branch; the first animal slaughtered; the first animal born; and the first son born.  Check out Exodus 22:29-30 again and Deuteronomy 26:1-11.  In today’s world, this could mean your first paycheck from a new job.  Firstfruits are costly and important.

Now we will come back to the story of Cain and Abel.  Genesis 4:2-7 reads:

² Later [Eve] gave birth to [Cain's] brother Abel.
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. ³ In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. ⁴ But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

⁶ Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

I can sympathize with Cain, up to this point.  I mean, he’s the older brother, and more is expected of the older brother by earthly parents.  Usually.  He is also growing crops, which is very, very labor intensive.  Since he was doing it by himself, he might have had to work harder than Abel.  In fact, he may have given Abel some grain to feed the livestock that gave birth to Abel’s offering.  He built his barn and started filling it with grain, and then thought it good to offer a sacrifice to God.

But look at what Cain gave:  Some of the fruits of the soil.  Nothing special.

Look at what Abel gave.  Abel doesn’t just give the firstborn, he gives multiple firstborn of his flock, and not just that, the fatty portions of them.  He gave the best of the first; the firstfruits!

God shows no partiality here.  Cain gave God a half-hearted, almost after-thought type of offering, and was self-righteous enough to demand that God favor it like Abel’s wholehearted offering.  God is just.  He shows no favoritism.  He judges according to the law, and according to what has been given us.  He rewards our sacrifice by our ability and our heart.

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As a personal challenge, there are two things to take from these passages.  The first is the nature of our sacrifice:  Whole; complete; and best.  The second is our favoritism:  We are to mimic God and not show any partiality.  If you think about it, this means a lot, especially in terms of our human friendships.

The presence of God is a powerful thing, so the Bible proclaims.  The text, especially in the Old Testament, is full of rules to protect people from God’s presence.  Moses can only see God’s back, while walking away from him.  When a man touches the ark of the covenant (which is said to have contained God’s presence) in 2 Samuel 6:6-7, he dies.  The high priest, while entering the holy of holies, would have a rope around his waist so others could pull him out just in case he died while that close to God.  So how did Adam and Eve walk with God in the garden?

Genesis 3:8-10 God walks through the garden.
Exodus 33:18-25; 34:5-7 No one may see God and live

First, let me clarify that no one may see God’s face and live, according to the verses in Exodus.  Moses sees the back of God (whatever that means), and lives.  He is, however, transformed by the event, and must wear a veil to cover the radiance of his face.  Just think about it:  Talking with God and seeing His back made Moses so bright, people could not look him in the face.

So what about Adam and Eve post-fall?  They were already stained by sin, yet God walks among them, and one can only assume that they saw Him.  Why did they not die?

I would add even further verses to this puzzle, so as not to leave them unaddressed.

At this point we have to pause.  Jesus is God, yet people saw Jesus and did not die.  And there are are least 77 people above claiming to see God in the Old Testament.

The key is the true form of God.  I think this is what John and Paul are writing about when the claim no one has seen God – no one has seen God’s true form.  God appeared to Abraham as three men, to Moses as a burning bush, to Hagar and Jacob through an angel, Moses saw only His back, Isaiah and the 73 men seemed to focus on God’s feet; John on the periphery, etc.

The most telling verse is the passage from Numbers, where Moses converses, face-to-face, with the form of God.  I admit, the first thing I think about upon hearing this is when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker receive Princess Leia’s distress message from inside R2-D2.  It was Princess Leia’s form, but not Princess Leia.  That was a recorded message.  Imagine video chatting:  Although two people are talking ‘live,’ they see only each other’s forms; you only see their image.

It is true that no one can see God in His true form, because any form that can accommodate the true infinity of Himself is unfathomable.  He cannot be contained in form.  John 1:18 is the only verse that comes close to explaining this.  Jesus is the only one to have ever seen God, because He is the only one that has (and can) know Him fully.  Everything else is an incomplete picture of God.

And, bringing this back to Genesis 3:8-10, this, an incomplete form of God, is what Adam and Eve experienced in the garden, as well.  The comment to Moses is referring to God’s true form, which is as humanly incomprehensible as the sum of all knowledge and the depth of God’s plan.  The face of a person is a feature very, very defining.  It might be equivalent in saying, “Let me know all of you.”  That would probably overload our optic nerves and our brains and cause death.   There is no contradiction.

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Last year, I had a phone conversation in the stairwell of FAR with a former small group leader about this whole ’sovereignty of God’ thing and different events going on my life.  I was talking all about God’s plan and that things always happen for a purpose.

And I wanted to know that purpose so badly.  I had already written here so much of the thought process:  Bad thing happens; God uses bad thing for something good.  I wanted to know the good thing right away.

The more we talked about it, though, the more apparent it became that this phase in life I was going through was not about me knowing.  Some of it was about me believing that sometime, somehow, it will be good… even if I never figure out why.  It was a faith deally.

The funny thing, however, is that as soon as I accepted the fact, God got to use my situation in someone else’s life, and I did see good come from the bad.  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t always work that way, but this time it was by the grace of God that I was blessed with a piece of the plan.

But overall, knowing God’s plan is just trusting:  Unquestionably in received actions; and fullheartedly in God’s character.

From the perspective of one on the outside, one of the purposes, noble or ignoble, of a religion is to train a person in morality and ethics.  It is a detailed manual on how to live one’s life, what actions are right, what actions are wrong, and how one is to distinguish the two from all shades of gray.  Philosophy and religion, both, delve into the realm of good and evil, and the pursuit of such good is considered honorable.

The Bible’s opinion seems to be split:  On one hand, it was absolutely wrong to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and on the other, anyone who is mature in faith should be able to tell the difference between good and evil.  How can both be correct?  The incriminating verses follow:

GE 2:15-17, 3:4-6 It is wrong to want to be able to tell good from evil.
HE 5:13-14 It is immature to be unable to tell good from evil.

So many times we focus on the act of disobedience in the story of the fall that we forget what the action was – it was eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Why would God want to keep that knowledge from human beings?  What is so wrong about man wanting to know what is right and what is wrong?

I think we often become disillusioned with the popular notion that Adam and Eve were innocent beings.  And by innocent, I mean stupid.  If you asked a person on the street (or a person in the pew) to describe Adam and Eve, I think many would give the picture of clueless creatures, incapable of making decisions.  When they eat of the tree they wake up, and all of a sudden, become self-aware.  All of a sudden they have a conscience and can make decisions on right and wrong.  Then God comes barging in, relenting upon creation and asking why they took the fruit and cursing the serpent, like Zeus all up in arms about Prometheus stealing fire and giving it to humans.

I don’t like that description.  Adam and Eve were meant to rule this world.  Adam was formed as a king, and God put him in charge of all that was created.  I think Adam was a smart guy, and Eve a smart woman, as well.  I think they knew what good and evil was; I think God is not a God that hides fire from His people.

So if Adam and Eve knew good and evil, what was there to steal?  Why prohibit eating the fruit?

In taking the fruit, Adam and Eve, in essence, decided they were going to be like God, and not the good way.  They decided that they were going to say what was good and what was evil, and not God.  Before the fall, God was the center of their morality, but post-fall they became the origin of right and wrong.  Now man judges actions from the locus of himself:  He judges himself, other people, and God.

Turning to the verses in Hebrews, we see the author saying that anyone walking in faith must be trained to discern good and evil.

My question is, how is one trained?

My answer and my contention is that ‘training’ means stripping away the thought that we are the center of the universe.  Constantly.  Let’s go back and let scripture define scripture.  Proverbs 3:5-6 says we need to trust God and not depend on ourselves.  Let God define what is right and wrong.  Ephesians 5:17 and Romans 12:2 say that we need to be able to discern what is God’s will, not define for ourselves what is correct or incorrect.

And so, in every decision, the mature should ask themselves, “What is God’s will?”  Everything is brought back to God, and not to self.

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As is sometimes the case, the logic seems backwards.  Human beings knew good and evil because they knew God.  But as soon as we wanted to become the center of the universe, defining good and evil, we separated ourselves from God, and lost some of that innate knowledge we were trying to gain.  Now, the only way to know right from wrong is to strip away that ambition of being God; the center of the universe.  We need to know God first.

And, as Hebrews 5:13-14 states, to make it habit by constant practice.

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A lovely two verses, if I do say so myself.  These are often brought up because the writer seems to have a brain fart – in the first verse, he claims one thing but in the very next verse seems to say the exact opposite.  Read on:

Proverbs 26:4-5~ Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.  Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

An early observation is that the author may be talking about different events.  For example, do not answer the fool this way under ____ circumstance, but rather answer the fool according to his folly under _____ circumstance.  Another conclusion would be to not answer according to his folly (v4), but to [eloquently] expose his folly (v5).

Indeed, I like the latter much better than the former.  Do not answer the fool under his terms of folly, but answer the fool in response to his folly.

Let’s consider verse 4.  We should not answer the fool according to his own folly.

The fool’s folly in argument may be that the he is improperly arguing with tools such as appeals to emotion, ad hominem, etc.  Do not, in turn, resort to these same tactics against him, or you will also be a fool.

Similarly, check for the straw man.  When arguing with a fool, do not answer according to an ignorant set of rules.  For the apologist, this is seen every day.  On debate boards, you will find many agnostics that will claim that they cannot disprove the notion of a god, but they can disprove the God of the Bible by simple logic.

The problem with the above is where it starts:  Humans.  It starts with human definitions of love, mercy, justice, grace, salvation, etc., and human extremes that cannot overlap, ie:  Justice and Mercy.  The young apologist is likely to engage in debate completely neglecting the idea of the divine and ignoring the use of the Bible, thinking that the fight must be fought on the other’s turf, using the other’s rules.  In effect, he is not necessarily defending the straw man his opponent has crafted, but is rather trying to prove the straw man’s existence.  And in the process, he forgets that the straw man’s sole purpose in creation was to be beaten.

Now let’s consider verse 5.  Answer the fool.

Jesus was famous for this.  Several times, the teachers of the law tried to trap Him with questions, and Jesus exposes their motives.

In Luke 20:1-8, Jesus’ authority is questioned.  In effect, the chief priests wanted Jesus to say that He was controlling God’s authority or that He was God.  The obvious response to this, because the people had little idea of Jesus’ divinity and were weary of the Roman rule and religion, would be a sure sway of public opinion against Jesus.  The mob would have taken Him earlier than they were supposed to.  The other answer would be that Jesus did these things by His own authority, which would have discredited Him.

The folly of the questioners was that they did not know who Jesus was.  Jesus turns the question against them, by asking if John’s baptism was from heaven or of men.  This trapped the questioners, because they would look bad if they answered either way, and the people would turn against them.  They knew that Jesus knew the motive behind the question.

Jesus does not answer his questioners on their terms.

So, too, do I hope in this small series of blog posts to not be caught by the fool.

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As an epilogue…

I got into a small argument today with another man (agnostic) who was claiming that the Gospels were fiction and that Jesus was actually a figurehead of the Essenian movement who died 90 years before we think He was born.  Firstly, he had thrown out all Christian writings on the subject because of bias, including the New Testament and the early church letters and accounts (like Origen, Martyr, Irenaeus, etc.).  He then threw out the works of Josephus (secular) because of Christian interference and manipulation.  He then admitted into evidence small sections of the Talmud (Jewish records) referring to a man fitting the above description, born to a Miriam, healing people, heretically reforming Judaism, hung on the day before passover.  The name was Yeshu ban Pandera (phonetic variations are many), but is included only in the margins.

The date of the oldest known source of this document is in the late 300s and 400s.  And that’s being scholarly generous.

Now.  To be consistent with the verses from Proverbs, you do not answer him according to his straw man.  Do not give in to any of his assumptions.  Stay Biblically consistent, and show that the Bible remains unanimously clear about the subject, and include the early church fathers.  Do not even give in where you claim Jesus was God, but maybe born 120 years earlier than we thought.  Do not argue in his territory.

And answer him according to his folly.  Firstly, expose the historical sources.  If Christian writings are thrown out due to age and bias, then so should the Talmud he is using.  Secondly, expose the argument for what it is – it is an attempt by him to get his foot in the door.  He is trying to establish a foothold of doubt upon which to build his argument.

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I clearly remember a presentation during 6th grade that was pretty bad.  I mean, it was so bad that sometimes I think I developed my speech impediment during those six or seven minutes.

The subject was history, and my presentation group was assigned to the era of the Thirty Years’ War.  Why twelve-year-old kids were doing such an in-depth presentation on these thirty years is beyond me, yet there we were.  My portion was second in the group, and I was to talk about one of the underlying causes of the war and heated subjects in Europe at the time.

My mini-presentation was about the uneasy peace following the Augsburg treaty, and why the two sides (becoming three with the influence of another branch of protestantism) of Lutherans and Catholics were at odds, making the region very hostile and tense.

I had this master plan of making this a backdoor way of sharing my faith.  Yes, I would say how the tenets of Lutheranism were direct reactions against the Catholic church at the time, but I planned on doing it as a statement of beliefs:  Faith alone saves; the Bible is the ultimate authority; the priesthood of all believers.

But when I was up there, in front of the class, I couldn’t do it.  Or, rather, could not do it well.  When I was writing on the chalkboard, my penmanship (chalkmanship?) became even more atrocious.  When I was using the old overhead projector to draw the Lutheran Seal, everything was all squiggly.  And I stuttered.  Oh, how I stuttered.

My teacher, the late Mr. Sampson, made a comment afterward, “Steve, that’s the most nervous I’ve ever seen you.”

Maybe I was so embarrassed and nervous because, well, this was something that I cared about.  I have no problem speaking in front of people when I could care less about the information presented.  I don’t know when I’m going to grow out of this.