Specificity

Specificity is the difference between the condemnation of the enemy and the conviction of the Spirit.  It requires little contemplation or courage to confront one’s own shortcomings in the most general terms, because generality is only a pretense for transparency.  But no life change ever resulted from a man recognizing a tendency in himself toward ‘lust’ or ‘pride’ or ‘anger.’  Rather, something distinct and substantial begins to happen only when a person chooses to repent of thinking on that woman, or deriding that brother, or condemning that colleague.  We have made no progress in our walk with Christ until we confront our sins as they are, in the particular, and not in the abstract.  Christ died not only to accomplish the removal of sin in general and as a concept, but the removal of the sins of real life, the ones with real effects, in need of real forgiveness.

Satan has no interest in bringing you face to face with the reality of your particular sins, unless he can also convince you that they have removed you beyond the reach of the grace of God.  His tactics alternate between alienation and approximation: he will use either your particular sins to drive you from the Savior or your lack of specificity to keep you from Him.  Satan will call you an angry person, but he will never point out an angry word; he will call you lazy, but will never lead you to action.

The result is that we become discouraged with our lack of progress and confused over how to change.  The enemy’s lies always involve a kernel of truth: our sins do prevent us from fellowship with the Lord, and the general can always be drawn from the particular.  But if the blood of Christ is not sufficient to cleanse even the deepest sins, then it is not adequate to eliminate any of them.  And just as scrubbing the kitchen floor does not merely consist in purchasing bleach but also in applying it to that spot by the stove, so victory over habitual sins does not consist only in the discussion of principles, but in repentance from that offense and restitution to that offended person.

The antidote is the rough and uncomfortable work of detailed honesty.  The difference between principles and repentance is the difference between morality and obedience.  And obedience is not simply the rejection of extremes or the discovery of a balance between them; it is a series of choices.  Take a moment and think back through your day (or week).  What words did you speak in anger?  When did you look at a woman with lust for her in your heart?  When did you act in selfishness instead of love?  Spend some time in Galatians 5:16-26, and allow the Spirit of God to apply the principles of His Word to the particular choices of your life.

Inerrancy

Imagine yourself on a desert island. It's just you, a few miles of bright, sandy beach and the vast blue ocean all around. And treasure. Somewhere on this island is a buried treasure of unimaginable worth. And it's your job to find it. Armed with nothing but a map, a compass and a shovel, you set out in search of what promises to be a magnificent prize. If your map and compass are both reliable, and if your legs don't give out, you ought to find what you are looking for before too long. But what if your map is mistaken? What if your compass never points north? What if you can't trust the only tools you have to help find the treasure?

This analogy is admittedly a bit silly, but the problem it addresses is far from foreign to college students, even those at purportedly Christian universities. The Christian Church has for nearly two millennia treated the Bible as a map and a compass, not pointing to a large sum of money, but to the heart of God Himself. From the very first week or so of class, many of today's college students have their faith in the reliability of the revealed Word of God challenged and undermined, being reminded time and time again of the many "inconsistencies" and "contradictions" that have forced many open-minded scholars to question its historicity. And sadly, unable to respond to the confrontations to their faith, many of these students have swallowed the bait.

Some defenders of this way of thinking, in an attempt to explain these apparent problems, choose to affirm God's perfection, instead assuring us that the message was garbled in the transition to human language. Others suggest that God is not concerned with trivial historical details, but is more intent on conveying the larger story of His grace and love, working in humanity to bring sinners to salvation, and so some errors are perfectly acceptable. Still others prefer to point out that God could not possibly have addressed every false idea that man has come up with, and so He accommodated His message to the errors in our thinking, choosing to speak to us in ways that are "mostly correct."

Friends, this is wrong. As Christians, we believe that God is sovereign over human language; to demand that He be restricted to its confines negates His omnipotence. On the other hand, to insist instead that He would willingly adapt Himself to our own errors or incidentally affirm our own mistakes makes God out to be at best, capricious, and at worst, a liar. But 1 Samuel 15:29 makes it clear that God "will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind."

I believe that there is a better way. We must place our trust in God's Word; without it, we have no map, no compass and no direction. When we insist that it contains errors in the original manuscripts, we are destroying the very foundation of the Church, placing more confidence in ourselves than in God. We must not settle for the easy route; if we cannot trust everything in the Bible, then we have no right to trust anything in the Bible.

I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm only human, and I make mistakes like everyone else. But our God is not like us. He does not make mistakes. He couldn't speak anything but truth, even if He wanted to. It requires faith to believe that the contradictions can be resolved, and faith is a choice. Choose this day whom you will believe. The treasure awaits.

Identity

Let me start off with a question: who are you?

That’s a funny question, if you pause to think about it. If you walked up to someone on the street and asked them that question, how do you think they would answer? They’d probably start off by telling you their name and where they’re from, or something like that, right?

But think about it. That doesn’t really answer the question. Sure, I can tell you my name (Chris) and where I’m from (Columbus, Ohio), but that doesn’t really tell you anything about who I am; it just tells you what you can call me and where you can find me. If you want to find out who someone actually is, you’ve got to go deeper than just names and places.

The truth is, I can give you my height, weight, hair color, occupation, and even my life history. But all of those things only describe me; they don’t tell you who I am, and we really aren’t much closer to finding out how to answer the question, who are you? Who am I?

You may be surprised to find that at least one person in Scripture had to answer this same question, and he certainly didn’t go about it in the conventional way. In John 1, we read about an interaction between some Jewish priests and John the Baptist. Now, John had been going around Israel, preaching repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins; the Bible tells us that he was actually preparing the way for Jesus to fulfill His own ministry. The Jews didn’t yet know about Jesus, but they did know that they ought to be expecting God to send them a Messiah, whom they hoped would set them free from the oppressive rule of the Romans, and they were hoping that John might actually be that Messiah. The story picks up in verse 19:

And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ." And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" And he answered, "No." So they said to him, "Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said" (John 1:19-23, ESV)

Do you notice anything strange here? Take a moment to see if you can find anything, and then keep reading.

Okay, time’s up. What’s so weird about these verses? Well, the Jews are asking John the question, “who are you?” Okay, that’s not too weird. Lots of people ask that question all the time. What’s weird is how John answers it: he doesn’t. Instead of telling the Jews who he is, he tells them who he’s not: “I am not the Christ.” The Jews aren’t satisfied, so they keep asking: “Are you Elijah?” “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” “No.”

At this point, the Jews are clearly a little bit confused (I would be, too); this mysterious guy isn’t answering their question! Instead, he’s just said, “Nope” three times in a row. Weird.

So the Jews pull out all the stops: "Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"

This time, John finally answers them, but he does it by quoting a Bible verse from Isaiah: "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said." What’s amazing about this response is that John defines his own identity in terms of who Jesus is and what He came to do.

He’s saying, “You want to know who I am? You want to know what my identity is? I’m the one who’s making a way for Jesus. My identity comes from Him. I don’t define myself by my name, or where I live, or what school I go to. I don’t define myself by who my parents are, or where I work, or what I’ve accomplished. I define myself by who Christ is, and what God’s Word says about who I am.”

For followers of Christ, this is how we answer the question of who we are. It’s not about us. This life is not about you, or me, or anyone else. It’s about Christ. You want to know who I am? Look to Christ. I am who He says I am, and who His Word says I am. I live for Christ and I die for Christ. I abide in Christ, and He abides in me. My identity is found in Christ.

So now it’s your turn: who are you? If you’re a follower of Christ—you guessed it—your identity is found in Christ. Not what the world says about you. Not what your friends say about you. Not what your past says about you. You are what God’s Word says about you. You might be wondering, well, what does God’s Word say about me? I’m glad you asked. Here are some things that Scripture says about you if you are a follower of Christ:

-You are loved. (Romans 5:5, 1 John 3:1)

-You are forgiven. (1 John 1:9)

-You are victorious (1 Corinthians 15:57)

-You are being conformed to the image of Christ. (Romans 8:29)

-You are free from sin. (Romans 6:20-23)

I could keep going, but you get the idea. If you belong to Christ, this is who you are.

If you don’t know Christ, then many of the things that I’ve said don’t apply to you. But here’s the good news: they can. Right now, you can make the choice to find your identity in who Christ is and what He did for you.

Step 1: Admit that you’re a sinner.

Step 2: Believe that Jesus died to pay for your sin.

Step 3: Confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and receive Him now through prayer as Lord and Savior.

Part of confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior means choosing to find your identity in Him. It means acknowledging that He is in charge of your life, and the One who is responsible for saving you. By choosing to accept His payment for your sin, you are choosing to believe that this life isn’t about you; this life is about Jesus.

So, back to my original question: who are you? How would you answer that question, given what you know now? What does God’s Word have to say about you?

For myself, my name is Chris, and I’m a follower of Jesus Christ. It’s nice to meet you.

Genesis

I wrote the following post as a response to a recent question about whether or not it is right to attempt to consider both sides of the controversy within the Church over the correct understanding of the opening chapters of Genesis (the so-called evolution/creation controversy). Enjoy.

For most theological and doctrinal controversies, the dialogue centers around a particular passage or set of passages in Scripture, and the different sides of the debate typically bring different interpretations of those passages to the table for evaluation. The important point to realize is that in order to be considered a valid, potentially correct understanding of a passage, any doctrinal position must represent a positive interpretation of the passage in question. For example, a typical disagreement might occur over the proper translation of a given Hebrew or Greek word. There may be multiple possibilities, each with its own set of arguments either in its favor or against it. Since each perspective presents a different view of the text based on the text itself, we should try to evaluate each perspective in turn, and seek to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us to the best interpretation.

The evolution/creation controversy, however, is different from most other doctrinal controversies in this respect. The Biblical understanding of the first chapters of Genesis (typically referred to as "young earth creationism," or YEC) simply claims that these chapters mean precisely what they say; i.e., when Genesis 1 refers to the "evening" and "morning" of each day, the most natural and immediate understanding of the text is that the author is speaking of the ordinary days to which we are accustomed. Other positions (which, for simplicity, I will refer to as "non-young earth creationism," or non-YEC) claim that the opening chapters of Genesis do not need to be read in this fashion, but they never offer a more natural reading of the text. In other words, non-YEC consists of no position in and of itself; it is not a positive position grounded on convincing arguments from the text, but instead is a negative position regarding what the text does not say. Rather than presenting an actual alternative to YEC, non-YEC simply tries to explain why YEC is not a necessary reading.

Why does this matter? The fact that non-YEC is only a position insofar as it maintains the negation of YEC indicates that its sole purpose is to explain why the text doesn't have to say what it appears to. But what would be the motivation for such a claim? The motivation is science, and here we get to the heart of the problem. The evolutionist websites (assuming they are Christian) are all presenting a view of Scripture which is interpreted in light of science, thereby making Scripture subservient to science. If science has the final word, then we must always change our view of Scripture to match whatever science tells us.

This philosophy of interpretation, however, flies completely in the face of what Scripture tells us about itself. For instance, consider what we find in Psalm 19:7-9: "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether" (NASB). This is not the description of a document whose truth is in anyway contingent upon external sources. Moreover, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 reminds us that "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (NASB). The Greek word for teaching here refers to "sound doctrine," which certainly involves what we choose to believe about the opening chapters of Genesis. These verses make clear that Scripture alone is sufficient for the correct understanding of Scripture, with the (often implicit) proviso that the Scriptures be read under the supervening guidance of the Holy Spirit (see, for instance, 1 John 2:27). In short, we do not need science or anything else to help us get at the true meaning of the Scriptures; we need only the help of God Himself.

By failing to provide an argument from the text, non-YEC appeals instead to science as the ultimate authority, and Scripture as something which we must understand in light of what we know from science. This difference (between the evolution/creation controversy and other doctrinal controversies) means that there is little reason to examine the opposing sides of the argument, since the opposing side essentially boils down to subtly questioning the authority of God's Word in the face of apparently contradictory empirical evidence. We must choose by faith to accept what Scripture tells us is true; this is not turning off our brains, as some might suggest, but rather choosing to trust that God is both truthful (Titus 1:2) and sovereignly capable of directing each word written in His Book (Matthew 5:18). These convictions form the foundation of YEC. Any opposing argument worth considering must be grounded not in science, but in Scripture.

Predestination

There's a good deal of confusion in the church as to what exactly the doctrinal concept of predestination entails. My own suspicion is that the current Protestant church deviates rather significantly from Calvin's own understanding of this doctrine, while the Catholic church has departed to a comparable extent from its own Thomistic heritage; in fact, the two are likely very nearly the same.
My own thinking on this issue has been influenced primarily by Scripture (of course), but also by the thinking of Calvin and Aquinas. One way to concisely present the dilemma (or contradiction, or paradox, or whatever you'd like to call it) is in the following form:
(1)-Scripture clearly teaches that God, in some sense, "predestines" those whom He saves, i.e., He chooses, identifies and singles out those upon whom in His wisdom He wills to pour out His grace, even "before the foundation of the universe," and apart from any influence the recipient of salvation could have had on this choice. Moreover, the saved cannot even choose to follow God without His assistance, being "dead" in their sins (to borrow the language of Ephesians 2); conversely, God's call is irrevocable and irresistible, which is to say that it is perfectly effectual. In other words, a person can become saved if and only if God has predestined them in the above sense.
(2)-In accordance with common experience, human beings appear to have a meaningful capacity to make real choices without external constraint, something which is commonly referred to in a colloquial fashion as "free will."
(3)-This so-called free will is incompatible with God's sovereignly predestining us to be saved, for if God has already chosen us, then how can our choices be free, i.e., free from external constraint? How can injunctions to obey the Lord and be saved be meaningful if we can only respond to them as a result of God's predestination anyway?
Although some will complain, I'm doing my best to avoid the technical philosophical jargon that often tends to cloud the discussion. The greatest difficulty I find with this construction of the problem at hand is the non-Biblical notion of free will. In particular, I'd like to look a little more closely at what we mean by "free," or by "without external constraint."
And this is really the crux of it all. What one usually thinks of when one speaks of free choice is simply the opposite of another person attempting to force one's hand; consider, for instance, a power-hungry tyrant who demands that his subjects offer assent to the ideologies of his design, or forces them to obey him in a way which is contrary to their own preferred course of action. We think of a kind of detestable coercion which violates one's own privilege and responsibility to make conscionable choices on the basis of one's own convictions.
However, proponents of the "free will" hypothesis typically fail to acknowledge the assumptions inherent and implicit in this notion. In particular, if my actions are truly to be free, i.e., made without a sense of pressure or coercion from anyone or anything other than myself, then I must be the sole origin of the choices to carry out these actions. Indeed, my own existence must constitute a sufficient explanation for my choices. In other words, I must be who I am necessarily, and must in fact exist necessarily.
The difficulty is, although Christian theism unhesitatingly recognizes God Himself as possessing such a necessary existence, it leaves no room for such a view of contingent and created humanity. If I am a contingent being (as of course I am; I could as easily have existed as not), then I cannot function as a sufficient condition for my own choices, and some other explanation is necessary. As the argument suggests, only God can provide such an explanation.
If I am unable to function as a sufficient condition for my choices, then I also cannot claim to have used "free will" to choose salvation. Since God alone exists necessarily, He alone acts as a sufficient condition for my choices, as well as those of all other beings with "free will." It is in at least this sense that God can predestine us to salvation, since there is no longer any ultimate and inviolable sense of human freedom in view.
This construction has a few beneficial qualities. First, it preserves what we know from Scripture is how God interacts with His human creation. He is still completely in control, and since all contingent beings derive their existence from Him, the ultimate reason for every event, every subsidiary cause and its effect, and every choice is Him, and Him alone. Such an understanding, moreover, gives us a healthy glimpse of the majestic transcendence of God.
Best of all, this view does not come to us at the expense of human responsibility. As some have put it, although God may allow evil for a time to accomplish His greater purposes for His creation, He is never responsible for His creatures' wrongdoing; on the contrary, we ourselves are responsible to exercise the freedom within limitations which He offers to us, and which we are unable to use for anything good until Christ has renovated our hearts. The thorniest objection I know of to the perspective I am advocating is God's interactions with Pharaoh in the Old Testament. In particular, who is responsible for this: Pharaoh or God? The answer appears to be, both, possibly even in the sense given here. I can't claim to have arrived at a perfectly satisfactory resolution to this , but I feel sufficiently confident in this (I believe to be, Biblical) account of predestination/sovereignty/freedom and its comfortableness with the events detailed in Exodus and revisited in Romans 9, to claim that even these objections present it with no insurmountable difficulties.

Faith

What is faith? As per one of my favorite definitions (of which I cannot claim the credit of invention), "faith is believing the Word of God and acting on it, no matter how I feel, because God promises a good result." Faith in the Biblical sense is not, first of all, grounded in some intellectual adherence to a particular set of plausible but unproven assumptions. It is not reasoning and conniving and rationalizing my way to a solution which maximizes my profits and minimizes my losses. Faith is grounded in a person. It is taking God at His word, and accepting what He says as reliable and true, not because of my honest evaluation of the relevant lines of evidence, but because of who He is as a Person, and who He is as my Friend.
This is so hard for me. One of the greatest difficulties in my walk with Christ, I am coming to realize, is my inability (in my flesh) to turn my brain off. Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm by no means advocating some kind of quasi-evangelical anti-intellectual habits of slovenly thinking. I will stand by my conviction that worship is never complete if I have failed to love the Lord my God with every aspect of my being, including my mind. But we err in the opposing direction to suppose that we can anticipate the Lord's actions or intentions in a particular situation simply by virtue of our own mental acrobatics. We focus our energies on ascertaining some reason why what the Lord has laid on our hearts to accomplish is a plausible expectation.
In other words, although I am all for thinking critically about one's faith and exploring the regions which are dimly lit and fraught with inconsistency, when we attempt to understand why we find ourselves in a particular situation or why the Lord has commanded us to follow a certain course of action, we are in danger of wandering a little past our paygrade.
Although the Lord may bless us with wisdom to understand "the reason why" He asks us to do something, there is simply no promise in Scripture which guarantees this in every instance. It is when we sense the void of our own understanding that we must return on our knees to the throne of our Father, from whom and through whom and to whom are all things, both now and forever. And this is the essence of faith: not a conscious forfeiture of one's responsibility to address intellectual problems faced by ourselves or other believers, but a ready submission to the Person of Jesus Christ, who rightfully expects our unquestioning obedience to His instructions.
My instinct, when faced with a decision which requires faith, is to question whether I have truly heard the voice of the Lord. Was it merely an intuition? Was it my own habits of thought, or an internal voice which suggested this course of action? Or was it genuinely a prompting which originated with the Holy Spirit?
I won't pretend to have the answers to those questions, but one thing I do know, the more time I spend in a person's presence, the more I can begin to discern the motions in the spirit of that person. I begin to feel their heart beat, and to know the things for which they ache. Such is my relationship with Christ. Through time spent in His word, I can grow in my ability to know the voice of the Lord from the counterfeits. God grant us the wisdom to know His voice ever more clearly, and to follow it unquestioningly, knowing that He alone is truly sovereign and good, and will not lead us into harm. God grant us faith.

Plans

I've recently been giving some attention to the question of what really matters in this life. Now, I'm not just trying to add a few more lines to the already extensive work composed on how no one could ever truly find a profound and lasting sense of happiness in material and temporal things like wealth, romance, substances, a successful career, or the like. Of course, all of those subjects are, at the very least, a proper subset of what I'm trying to address. But it's not often that people commit a sin of this nature in such a typical and obvious form; it's more commonly (I think) an issue which is of the heart, and not simply defined by our corresponding actions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'm still relatively young, which means that I still have a number of decisions in my future, some which my culture considers to be of utmost significance, e.g., whom to marry, where to work, etc.. As I'm contemplating these decisions, it's hard to know where to begin. Do I finish my graduate degree in physics? After that, do I try to apply for a postdoctoral position somewhere? Do I find a school to teach at, or a place to get that degree in philosophy I've been coveting for awhile? Do I get an M.Div and become a pastor? Or something wholly unrelated to the academic field entirely? Should I drop everything and become a missionary? Should I consider raising a family? Getting married, settling down and leading a "normal life" (whatever that is)?
As a man, these questions are closely linked to my sense of identity. They are, moreover, all expressions of one fundamental question: when I stand before Christ at the end of my life, what will He say? Will He look at me, with a sparkle in His eyes, "Well done, good and faithful slave You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:21, NASB)? Or will He look at me with a compassionate disappointment that acknowledges my successes in His name, and quietly forgives my consistent failure to seek His leading for my life?
From the way I've organized my thoughts, it's probably clear how I want to address that question. Whether or not I ever have this hypothetical conversation with my Lord, I know that the essence of His response would be a direct measure of the extent to which He was in control of my life. That is to say, I cannot hope to attain genuine fulfillment by finding the right combination of romance, economic success and power; I also can't hope to attain it by giving of myself to every conceivable charitable cause and well-intentioned ministry. I can't afford to face the manifold decisions that afflict young people like myself today as though I could hope to make the right choice in every instance, or as if the outcome of those choices could in any way offer validity to the steps that I took to making them.
What I'm trying to say is this: success cannot be defined in terms of what I do, but only in terms of what I allow the Lord to do through me. It's here that we find the correct understanding of one's identity, for only here can what makes life worth living be unconditionally identified as the One who gave me the life to live in the first place. Whether it means a life spent hunched over a desk, pushing pencil against paper to explore the implications of theoretical physics in some specific application, or one which is used to bring countless souls to Christ, it can hardly be judged a success or a failure apart from the answer to the question, did I put Jesus Christ first in every area of my life?
Maybe you're twiddling your thumbs right now. You're trying to decide if you should go to college, or if you should become an artist, writer, scientist, teacher...should you get married? Maybe you've been out of college for a while, but don't feel that your life is headed in any one, particularly dramatic direction. Maybe you feel as though you're just spinning your wheels.
And that's okay. Jesus never promised drama or the limelight. He never said that yours would become a household name, like that of Mother Theresa or Billy Graham. But He did promise, "to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and ^N)">immortality, eternal life" (Romans 2:7, NASB). Don't feel as though you've got to measure the worth of your life in terms of how much you've accomplished for the kingdom of God; every day which is lived for the love of the Father, in the strength of Christ and by the leading of the Holy Spirit is all that you can (or should) think of as success.
Success is not simply avoiding the vices and idols of this present age, but it is also not placing virtue and charity above all else. Success exists always and only in the life of one who is fully surrendered to Christ. Are you surrendered? If you are, congratulations, for great is your reward in heaven. Press on, fight the good fight, and be faithful where the Lord has placed you. That's what really matters.