Bahnsen on Where to Start

"The Christian's final standard, the inspired word of God, teaches us that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge' (Prov 1:7).  If the apologist treats the starting point of knowledge as something other than reverence for God, then unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness of God's wisdom at the end of the argumentation does not really make sense.  There would always be something greater than God's wisdom - namely, the supposed wisdom of one's intellectual starting point.  The word of God would necessarily (logically, if not personally) remain subordinate to that autonomous final standard.  The situation is pictured well by C.S. Lewis:  'The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge.  For the modern man the roles are reversed.  He is the judge:  God is in the dock... The trial may even end in God's acquittal.  But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God is in the Dock.'"

(Greg Bahnsen in Van Til's Apologetic)

My Soul's Prayer

My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God.  (Psalm 42:2)

God, in the midst of our busy-ness, in the midst of our difficulties, in the midst of our doubts, in the midst of our discussions, in the midst of our Christian living, in the midst of our relationships, in the midst of our duties, in the midst of our joys, draw us near.  Do not let us forget that you are most important.  Do not let us forget your love.  Do not let us forget your cross.  Do not let us forget your grace.  Do not let us forget our need for you.  Draw us mightily and bind us to your heart.  Grant repentance where our hearts have been hard.  Grant obedience where we have chosen ourselves over you.  God, help me to value you over every other thing.  Help me to worship you as supreme.  

God, how can I live apart from you?

God, what wisdom do I have of my own?  None.

God, how could I repay you?  I cannot.

God, I place my trust in you.  I trust you for my eternity.  And I trust you for tomorrow.  And I trust you in this moment.  Your sovereign hands are hands of love, and you hold me unshake-ably, and you are a strong refuge for me when my heart quakes.  My trust in you, O Lord, is well-placed.  

God, strengthen me to do your will for your glory.  Strengthen me and keep me dependent on your Spirit for my fight against sin.  Strengthen my trust in your Word.  I am weak.  Lord, you are my strength.  

God, pierce my heart with longing for you.  Awaken my soul to cry for you.  Do not let my heart sleep.  Do not let me slumber when I might enjoy your presence.  Banish apathy from my heart, and banish laziness from my hands and feet.  Bid me to come to you.  Bid me to run to you.  Bid me to come, and give me ears to hear your call.  Give my heart a desire to run that it did not have in its deadness.  Thank you Lord for giving me life, abundant life, and may your Spirit help me to keep from wasting it.  Lord, my life will be not be waste if it is kept in your sweet Presence.  Oh, Lord, that I might know you more.  I would know anything less, if I might know you more.  

Grant that these prayers would issue from a believing heart in sincerity.  I offer these prayers in Jesus name.  Amen.

Some Thoughts in Response - #1

What place should personal experience have in a sensible discussion about faith? 

I think that you should be able to give more than personal experience if you really want to convince someone that your belief is true, if you want to convince them that they also should accept that belief.  I am a Christian.  I should be able to say why, and if I am in a discussion with a Muslim, I should be able to say why I am a Christian instead of a Muslim.  If we both just say, "This works for me in my personal experience," then we are at a standstill. 

This is not to say that personal experience is entirely beside the point or unimportant.  The Christian faith - and I am assuming many other faiths as well - would put great weight on personal experience.  It would be central.  Christianity says that knowing Christ is the most important thing, being in a loving relationship with Christ is the most important thing.  This aspect is certainly subjective, but if I am in a sensible discussion with someone checking out Christianity, I would want to talk about what it is like each day, what Christ means to me, how his Spirit helps me practically to get through.  This is the good stuff. 

There is more to the Christian faith than arguing with people who don't believe it.  If that's all it was, it would be rather pointless.  It would be like trying to convince people to enjoy a home with you that you have neglected to actually enjoy yourself.  God, if he exists, is far more than someone to know true things about.  He is a person, someone to enter into relationship with.  As a Christian, then, my main business ought to be that relationship, and then, on occasion, I must enter into dialogue with people who don't know the power of that relationship.  On those occasions, I must give reasons for the hope that is within me.  Quite naturally that will involve both subjective and objective elements. 

Subjectively I should be able to give a testimony of what God has done in my life and what difference he makes to my everyday life.  If I am to give a reason for the hope that is within me, I can talk about reasons, but it is not beside the point to discuss the nature and quality of that hope, what it is like to have and enjoy it. 

Objectively I should be able to give an intelligent response as to why I am a Christian, instead of other things.  I would give arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral motions argument.  And seeing the plausibility of theism, I would then argue from historical evidences for the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus. 

What if my conversation partner is not persuaded?  That is perfectly okay.  Everyone is free to believe what they want, and I think that if God exists, he wants it that way.  He does not compel belief or compel obedience, but he wants people to freely enter into that relationship with him.  The Christian conception of God is not one of coercion but of love. 

If my conversation partner is not persuaded, I should honestly attend to his doubts and try to examine them for myself.  I should not shut myself off.  But if I actually know God, that knowledge should not be dependent on whether or not there are atheists who doubt.  If I know my brother, I would not find a stranger's doubts about whether I had a brother very convincing.  At rock bottom I should still be able to say, "But I know him."  For plenty of people, me simply saying this with conviction might be enough.  And for others, I may need to take them to my facebook page and show them a picture.  And for others, there may be no way to prove it to them because they think the facebook picture is faked, and even if I showed them my brother, it might just be an actor hired to play my fake brother. 

There are good reasons for believing.  But your presuppositions will affect the way you see the evidence.  No one is neutral when they come to it.  If you are firmly atheist when you start to look at the evidence for theism and Christianity, there is a pretty good chance you will remain atheist.  If you are firmly Christian when you come to look at the evidence for atheism, there is a pretty good chance that you will remain Christian.  That is not to say that the search is impossible or fruitless, but it is to say that we should pay attention to our presuppositions and the effect that they will likely have on our search.

In Christianity our present experience of God is subjective.  God is, according to the Christian faith, a Spirit.  Knowing God, then, is going to have to be different from knowing my brother.  I can't put God in a test tube and hand him to you, and I can't show you a picture of him.  But Christianity differs from many other religions and many other philosophies in saying that God did take on flesh and become physical, objectively entering into history.  The truth of Christianity hangs upon the historical truth of the resurrection.  If it could be shown that the resurrection were not true, then Christianity would be exposed for a sham.  Historical investigation, then, is in order, and this is more objective than relating personal experience, but historians still cannot escape their presuppositions; they cannot escape their skin. 

If you think God is possible, reading the Bible or considering the historical evidence for the resurrection will look a lot different than if you don't think God is possible. 

There are other trails to chase, but I think I will end on that for now...

My Summer Reading List

No particular order...

1.  Reasonable Faith  (William Lane Craig)

2.  Christian Apologetics  (Norman Geisler)

3.  Bonhoeffer (Eric Metaxas)

4.  The Constants of Nature (John D. Barrow)

5.  The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)

6.  The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)

7.  Miracles (CS Lewis)

8.  The Bramble Bush

9.  Team of Rivals

10. The Resurrection of the Son of God (NT Wright)

We'll see how it goes...

Analogies Involving Time Travel

Suppose the following.

You are sitting eating breakfast. There is a racket outside. You check to see, and a DeLorean has pulled into the driveway, and someone hops out. Much to your surprise, it is a future version of yourself, aged about forty years! The elder you walks up to you and says:

"I am you from the future.  Take this."  You hand yourself a blue notebook.  "Keep this safe.  Do not write in it or alter it in any way.  Within it are the keys to time travel.  You must study and work to understand this book.  Remember this date.  You must come back to this exact time to perform this task as your future self.  Do not tell anyone about this.  If this technology gets out, who knows what will happen?  There would be no way to control it, and it could destroy the world.  Do you understand?"

You nod your head, jaw-dropped.  The elder-you hops back into the DeLorean and zips to who-knows-where and who-knows-when.  You go eat some lunch.

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Analogy #1  -  

Imagine the assurance and motivation of getting a glimpse at your future self.  If you knew that one day you would be a brilliant concert pianist, and you were able to get a sneak peak at it, you would be motivated in your practices.  You would know that, no matter how difficult, there would be a payoff in the end. 

If you knew that you were going to invent time travel, you would be very engaged in your science classes, and you would have great confidence. 

Spiritually, God's Word gives us a peak at our futures.  It tells us that we will be forever with our Maker, that we will worship him with increased capacities, and that we will have good things to do in a renewed world.  In that world we will be totally free from sin, decay, and heartache.  It will be awesome.

According to Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus is the in-break of our future hope into the present.  Our hope is a resurrection hope, and we believe Jesus has already had that resurrection, that he was the first-fruits of what is to come.  We have been given a sure word about our future and hope, and our present life with all its difficulties is a growing into what we will become, a growing into who we really are. 

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Analogy #2  -

The experience of being visited by your future self would be like experiencing a miracle. 

This experience would come to you as a bending of the rules of the universe as you understand them.  Time flows in one direction, and we experience it that way, and you just can't go backwards and forwards and visit other versions of yourself.  This isn't common place.  It isn't the way the rules work. 

Seeing a future version of yourself must have been sort of what it was like for the disciples to see Jesus alive again.  What a shock!  They knew, just as well as modern people, that dead people don't get up again.  But when you see it with your own eyes... you adjust.  You are humbled a bit about what things must happen and what things mustn't happen...

How would you react? 

I am reminded of Scrooge as he is visited by Marley's ghost.  He initially has the bravery to talk back to the ghost and explains him away as a bad bit of mustard.  He is experiencing the ghost and disbelieving in him at the same time. 

I imagine that many people would take a visit from their future selves as a bit of trickery, as a hallucination, as a bit of bad mustard... 

If there is more to the world than the naked eye can see, what sort of evidence could convince you of this?  Would the evidence be able to overcome your desire to offer alternative explanations?

I think that gullibility and skepticism are twin dangers.  Too many, afraid of one side, fall off the other in the quest for truth.

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Analogy #3 -

Why does the blue book exist?

How old is the blue book?

The way I have presented the scenario would seem to introduce a very interesting loop.  The book seems to be infinitely old.  Because the future-you had already had it for about forty years, and he inherited it the same way from another future-you that had used it for forty years.  Presumably, without the existence of this blue-book, you would never had discovered time travel.  Perhaps no one would have. 

To maybe tweak the scenario to avoid the presence of a physical book, imagine that the future you sits down and has a long conversation with you about the necessary details you will need to work out the theory of time travel.  So there is a nugget of information that gets transferred.  Continually.  You can't put a start date on it because it is eternally in that loop.  You get it and pass it along to yourself... who will pass it along to yourself.  Ad infinitum.

But why does this book, or why does this knowledge exist in the first place? 

It seems a little like cheating.  You get something for nothing.  No one ever had to do the work of discovering this knowledge, but it has brute-forced its way into this loop.  Implausible.  At least unexplainable.  Unaccountable.

You can explain the mechanics of how you got the book, but ultimately you cannot explain why.  And the how is not terribly satisfying once the existential question of why begins to gnaw at you. 

Consider an analogy from this blue book to the universe itself.

Why does the universe exist?  Why is there something instead of nothing?  How is there something instead of nothing? 

It is logically, metaphysically, common-sense-ically absurd to think that something literally came from nothing uncaused and for no reason.  The way that the Big Bang has traditionally been espoused points back to a singularity of time and space, a pointed beginning to the Whole Show.  Before the Big Bang, there was no time.  There was no space.  There was nothing.  In all honesty we cannot even fathom nothingness because we probably think of the darkness and the vaccuum of outer space.  But an empty vacuum is actually not nothing; it is still, at least, an empty something.  Oh what a conundrum!

Christians and other theists have traditionally put forward different versions of something known as the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God.  These arguments rest upon the absurdity of the claim that something comes from nothing.  Let me reproduce two versions:

The Kalam Cosmological Argument - 
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2.  The universe began to exist. 
3.  Therefore, the universe has a cause. 

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument - 
1.  Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2.  If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3.  The universe exists.
4.  Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
5.  Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God. 

The difference between these two different explanations is that of cause and reason.  What caused all this?  Why all this?  Not necessarily identical questions.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument digs into our mechanical understanding of things. The cause.  Number 1 in the argument seems to make intuitive sense, and there are no known counterexamples in our verifiable experience.  We do not see things popping into existence willy-nilly.  We see the existence of humans, and both evolutionists and creationists alike feel the need to give a cause.  Their very names are grounded in this reality.  They both realize that things don't just pop into existence.  If they did, it would be nice for a money tree to grow suddenly and unaccountably in my back yard.  Sadly, this will not occur.

The second premise in the Kalam argument takes as its evidence both philosophy and science.  The philosophical arguments - which I will for brevity's sake skip for now - conclude that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist, even though the idea of the infinite can.  This premise in the Kalam argument does not rest solely on philosophy, but also on science.  The science - through study of things like background radiation - pushes us to see that there was a beginning to things. 

If we accept the first and second premises, logic pushes us to the third premise: the universe has a cause. 

This is a not a conclusion that many modern scientists really like.  This is not a conclusion that many modern people really like.  Let's think out some of the implications of this conclusion...

If the universe has a cause for its existence, that cause must be something other than or outside of the universe itself.  The universe can do no causing until it actually exists.  It doesn't exist before it exists.  It is absurd to think that something can bring itself into existence.  This would be the equivalent of saying that the blue book in our example brought or caused or willed itself into existence.  Furthermore, if there is a singular beginning to time and space, the cause of the universe must be something outside of time and space as we know and experience it.  And it must be powerful enough to cause the universe as we see it.  So we have gotten to a powerful, non-physical cause. 

Consider how the Leibnizian argument supplements this.  Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.  We can certainly imagine the universe being different than it is.  It does not seem that the universe must necessarily exist.  It might not have.  So its explanation is not in a necessity of its own nature.  In that case, its explanation must be in an external cause.  Here we are pressed with the ever-present, ever-powerful question of the child: Why? 

I think that the Leibnizian argument supplements the Kalam argument by pushing us beyond a mere Cause to a Mind.  Before the beginning, there was nothing.  And in the nothingness, there was the Cause.  But why did it choose the moment it did to bring about the explosion we call the Big Bang?  Why not before, why not after, why not somewhere else?  (I recognize even the inadequacy of these questions to grasp the full nature of what was going on.)  There was an act of the will.  The thing that did the Causing was not something like a law of gravity or a number or something like that.  It was more like an agent, a very powerful non-physical Mind, deciding to act. 

How do atheists escape these uncomfortable conclusions?  There are some different options.  You decide for yourself how respectable they seem:

1.  Something literally came from nothing, uncaused and for no reason.  (The miracle of all miracles.)

2.  The universe has always existed.  This used to be the popular scientific view.  An eternal universe.  As cosmology began pointing to the falsity of this fact, we see attempts to keep it in place.  For instance, Einstein - to his later regret - fudged numbers on some of his equations in order to have a steady-state universe, one that was not expanding.  He did this because he was not pleased with the picture of an expanding universe because he knew that it had to be expanding from something.  What he wanted to believe shaped his science in this case.

I think some scientists operate as if, yes, there was an explosion that brought the universe into the state it is currently in.  But they do not operate as if it really had a beginning.  The Big Bang was just one thing in the history of the universe and it had some state prior to the Big Bang that led up to and caused it.  In this case, they conveniently avoid some of the conclusions we have reached, and they avoid the picture that science has recently painted.  And they retain belief in an eternal sort of universe.  Okay.

3.  The third is like the second.  A variation.  Some scientists put forth theories that make it sound like time can warp around or turn around on itself.  They make it seem like there is not a true beginning point.  Like time - instead of running in a straight line as we experience it - is actually more like a loop.  This way, they avoid the singularity of time and space that the evidence seems to point to. 

In this way - and this is what got me thinking on this post in the first place - the universe is like the blue book.  It exists as a brute fact, part of a vicious unexplainable loop.  There is no explanation internal as to why it would have to exist.  There is nothing we have discovered - and there is no reason to suppose that we will discover - an explanation that makes the universe necessary.  So why does it exist? 

If you avoid a beginning to the universe, you have sidestepped the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but you have done nothing to escape the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument.  You may be able to give mechanical how sort of explanation, but you are still pressed with the why question.  If the universe exists eternally in a straight line, or whether the universe exists eternally in a loop, there is still the quandary that it didn't have to be and yet is.  So why? 

4.  This is a silly question that I refuse to think about.  It isn't a question worth asking.  I guess that is one way of avoiding things.

Now what do the Cosmological Arguments do for me personally?  They incline my ears to listen.  There are good reasons, it appears, to think that there is a Cause and Reason to the universe that is outside the universe.  Perhaps... this Cause or Reason might want to communicate with us or give us more than bare existence.  Perhaps this Thing that made all this wouldn't be done with all this. 

Wait, you may say.  Don't you run into the same problems with an eternal God that you do with an eternal universe? 

Well, as I see it, you either have an eternal God or an eternal universe.  Because if everything is finite, then why isn't the universe already done and gone?  Because if everything is finite in time, then there was a time when nothing existed, and then stuff existed, which doesn't make sense. 

I would put God forth as the uncaused Cause, as a being who is not contingent by nature, but necessary by nature.  If there is anything eternal, it makes more sense to me to believe in an eternal God than in an eternal universe, especially considering the evidence against an eternal universe.  I do believe in universal truths that would be true in any universe, such as the rules of mathematics, but if these are universally and eternally true, where are they grounded?  Why are they there?  Is there some eternal necessity in their nature?  I think there must be an eternal Being that exists by a necessity of its own nature, that is the ground of other necessary and contingent things. 

How does God reveal himself in the Bible?  As self-sufficient, eternal, Creator, the ground of absolute morality and truth.  He is the ground of being.  He names himself, "I AM."  God is the stopper of the infinite regress.  He confronts us with his existence.  He is who he is.  From eternity to eternity.  The God of Scriptures is consistent with, yet far richer, than the picture we get using science and reasoning.  What then will we do with him? 

An Ultimate Standard

I take the Bible to be the ultimate standard of truth.  It is true in all that it speaks of.  It gives the best lens for viewing the world and thinking about the questions which it may not explicitly answer.  The Bible gives a true framework for reality.

Everyone has an ultimate standard. 

Perhaps your ultimate standard is the opinion of your parents.  Someone presents you with an idea, and you judge it to be correct or incorrect because of the instincts you have gained because of the way your parents have raised you. 

Perhaps your ultimate standard is pleasure and self-gratification.  You don't much care what you believe as long as it allows you to seek the life that you want.

Perhaps your ultimate standard is academic respectability.  You will only hold opinions that are in agreement with the latest findings being published in the respected academic journals.

Perhaps your ultimate standard is religious respectability.  You don't necessarily know why you believe what you believe, but you believe it because everyone around you seems to, and it is just easier to go with the flow. 

Perhaps your ultimate standard is empirical verifiability.  You will only believe those things you can test with your five senses.  Whatever anyone tries to tell you, you will only believe it if you can touch it or see it for yourself.  This makes it difficult to know a lot of things.  Unless you are willing to trust what other people say they have seen or touched, etc.

Perhaps your ultimate standard is your own rationality.  You trust only the things that your own mind can logically deduce.  Perhaps it is some combination of empirical verifiability and rationality. 

Perhaps your ultimate standard is pragmatism.  You are willing to accept a thing if it seems to work. 

Perhaps your ultimate standard is your own common sense, seen in your ability to critically evaluate using some combination of these other mentioned standards.

Perhaps your ultimate standard is humor.  You constantly look for the punchline in different things.

Basically, your ultimate standard is your last line of defense.  It is the place where you are standing in order to critique anything else.  The thing is, there is a circularity to everyone's ultimate standard.  For instance, try to ask yourself honestly what your ultimate standard is.  Then, ask yourself why your ultimate standard is better than the Bible as an ultimate standard.  Your critique of my standard and your defense of your own standard will inevitably invoke your own ultimate standard.  If it does not, then there is some other grounds at the bottom of your defense, and that is your real ultimate standard.  Rinse and repeat. 

Defend your ultimate standard.  Listen carefully to your defense.  On what are you building your house?  Why did you choose that foundation?  Upon what does that foundation rest?  Eventually you will get down to the land of, "Well, I just believe that is the best foundation."  Why?  "I just do."  Eventually you get to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the way your mind and heart works.  It is here that you discover where your faith lies.  Everyone places their faith in something. 

Why do I bring this up?  I do not think that Christianity should be rejected simply because of an allergic reaction to the ultimate nature of its claims to be true.  I do not think Christianity should be rejected simply because of an allergic reaction to a supposed circularity.  Absolute standards are ubiquitous.  And so is circularity. 

Not every circle is created equal.  I think there are better circles and worse circles to get sucked into.  How can we tell which one you should be in?  Is there some objective standard we can get into?  Some actually objective circle?  I do not think that total neutrality or objectivity is possible.  I don't think it is possible to escape the reality of being inside one of these circles, just as we cannot get outside of our own skin.  But empathy calls us to think outside of our own limited perspectives.  I don't know the solution to all this, but I know that it will be worse if we are not able to see our own limitations.

As a presupposition to study, we might begin by thinking God is possible.  We might begin thinking God is not possible or prohibitively unlikely.  We might begin thinking God is probable.  None of these starting points is neutral.  But in the end you must start and go, or else you are left in the middle of nowhere.  Our outcomes will be affected by our presuppositions.  And while it may not be possible to escape our presuppositions, we will have greater empathy and a better outlook if we at least acknowledge our presuppositions. 

Sometimes on our journey, we may find evidence, even from within our circle, to challenge our presuppositions.  (Just as Jesus, in love, stooped to enter our blue little sphere, so also, in love, may he step into our own individually colored circles.  Grace.)  Worldview shifts occur sometimes when presuppositions give way, and this is sometimes difficult because, on my analogy, it is like an earthquake in which the ground disappears.

Well...

I like having a standard outside of myself.  The modern mantra is Self.  Rationalism and empirical verifiability place the Self at the center of things.  A reliance on common sense places the Self at the center of things.  When our faith is not placed in God, it is most often placed in Self.  My own estimate of my intelligence and integrity and ability to live well is that I am not trustworthy.  Why should I place my trust in the hands of an unreliable twenty-five year old doofus?  I trust in Scripture because it feels like I am being addressed by God.  Instead of standing in judgment over Scripture and over God, I read on my knees (figuratively speaking) and accept God's prerogative to judge me.  I need Scripture because I need to be in relationship with an ultimate Authority that I have given permission to change my mind.  Where I disagree with Scripture I am wrong.  With no corrective, there will be no bounds to my own immaturity.  I am my own worst enemy.  (I believe the Bible is trying to save me from myself.  In order to give me my true self.)

This will seem antiquated, but I don't mind too much.  To take a page from the pragmatists, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding has been good.  My life has direction and purpose and joy for having been submitted to something bigger than myself. 

But this is the one to whom I will look:

he who is humble and contrite in spirit

and trembles at my word.

(Isaiah)

I pray for myself and my readers that humility and contrition would mark our interactions with God.

The Gospel and Finding God

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  (Matthew 5:2-12)

This Kingdom is upside down.  God stoops to lift the brokenhearted, the poor, the meek, and the mourning.  We would not build our own Kingdom this way.

How do we enter this Kingdom?

 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

This is the Kingdom where the dead are brought to life.  We rest in this because we worship a resurrected King.

Just as the Kingdom is upside, so is salvation.  By grace we have been saved, through faith.  The only thing we must do is believe.  Getting saved is not about being good. Staying saved is not about being good.  Salvation brings glory to God because it is about the work of Jesus, the work I couldn't do. 

Boasting is just silly when it comes to Jesus.  He is perfect.  I am saved because of him. Not because of me.  I am saved in spite of me.  Boasting?!  What a ridiculous idea.  What a God-belittling idea.  It must be excluded.

In being saved I am brought from death to life.  I could not cause this.  Dead people cannot spring themselves to life.  Jesus himself was raised to life in the power of the Spirit.  So our dead hearts are brought to life by the power of the Spirit. 

I am saved, not because I am smart.  I am saved, not because I looked for God really hard and found him.  I am saved because God fished me right out of darkness when I cared nothing for him, when I was turned the other way, when I was chasing the passions of my flesh, when my eyes were glazed over to his glory, when I was blind.  I was not looking for God, but he sent his Spirit to do an awakening work, and he lives in me now, giving me life! Amen.  Praise Jesus! 

Oh, how refreshing it is to live in a world that is not about me, in a Kingdom where the King is the main deal.  I will screw up royally, but I live in the Kingdom of the King who rubs shoulders with screw-ups, the King who stoops to wash the feet of screw-ups, the King who poured out his blood for screw-ups. I am thankful for my King who has called me his friend.

My Momma

I am who I am because of my mother and father.  Their spiritual influence has been bigger than I can calculate.  My dad was saved when my mom was pregnant with me.  Before that he had grown up and been in church, but his faith became real around that time.  My mom's faith has been in place since she was little, and if I can remember rightly she got saved while watching a Billy Graham Crusade.  I am sure that my dad would not be where he is today without my mom.  And I would not be where I am - in multiple senses - without the both of them.

I am grateful that my mom stayed at home while I grew up.  She worked a handful of years as a para-pro.  But for the most part she has found it a joy to raise children and keep a home well.  She has not, as far as I can tell, ever resented this.  But she has cherished this role and done it very well over the years.  She has consistently loved my Dad and made it look easy.  My brother and I are better off in more ways than we know because our mom took this time with us and did so with joy.  We were never a nuisance or a side-show in bigger things she had going on; we were loved well.  Mildly spoiled, yes, but raised to love the Lord and to do right. 

My mom doesn't know the Pythagorean Theorem, probably, and she would not be one to argue theology.  But she knows what she believes, and she lives on the basis of that conviction.  Her strong faith is an anchor, and she does a lot of good in a quiet way, blessing many in the Dalton community, in the Grove Level family, and in our own family.  My mom prays and believes the Bible.  She reads it.  And she does what it requires.  Love your God and love your neighbors.  This is a humble and enduring legacy.

I put a lot of stock in worldviews.  I learned a lot in David Blevins worldview class.  But I did not learn and adopt a Christian worldview from David Blevins.  I learned a Christian worldview from my Mom and Dad.  And I was around my Mom more often early on.  I am so grateful for the way I have been shaped by this influence. 

It is such a joy to write on such a topic as this. My mom is amazing!