Tag Archives: Christianity

It Feels So Good

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Continuing on the subject of human good…

While the sin nature is the source of personal sins (So then no longer am I the one that’s doing it but sin which dwells in me. Ro 7:17) it also produces human good, acts that, while they spring from sinful motivation, appear on the surface to be good. Altruism, feeding the poor, helping others, and philanthropy fall into this category.

The sin nature also has areas of strength. For example, some people would never be tempted by the sin of homosexuality or drug addiction, whether believers or unbelievers. Others are extremely disciplined and capable, not at all given to laziness. They are naturally organized, emotionally controlled and they can be very successful in life. They can seemingly be very successful in the Christian life, appearing good and right to others. And it could all be done in the flesh.

Others are naturally loving and outgoing. They are emotionally warm, they connect easily with others, they are often sincerely complimentary and very sweet. In today’s spiritual climate with its emphasis on loving everyone as the pinnacle of Christian activity, these people are often viewed as very spiritual, very “godly”. Yet that, too, can easily be something done through their flesh.

I say this because I know unbelievers who are like this. I know people who are religious (but not Christian) who are like this.

Another complication of human good is that the people performing it feel good about it. Like Cain, who offered the works of his hands to God as a sacrifice, they think God will be pleased. And often, because those works are pleasing to them and pleasing to others they think God is, indeed, pleased.

The following is from a little e-newsletter I used to receive called The Daily Intake. It was written by David Grande, and based on the teachings (if not the actual notes) of our pastor, Robert R. McLaughlin.  Here’s what The Daily Intake had to say about human good:

“Satan’s main strategy is, of course, human good. It is his genius plan to counterfeit the divine good produced in God’s plan. Satan’s plan, the improvement of the world and of the human condition, is secured through the human good that God Himself rejects. In reality, what Satan puts to use is God’s rejection, buy hey, it works for him.

“It works for people too. People love to feel that they are doing their part and inserting their portion. [They love to feel needed and wanted.] This is antithetical to God’s grace policy, but it sure pleases the old sin nature. In God’s plan, the believer operates in his new nature and in divine power. That is the only avenue to the production of divine good.

“In Satan’s world system as we know it, man operates in his flesh, his old man, i.e., the old sin nature. And the reason it feels so right is because the flesh loves that which the flesh produces.

“This is greatly applauded by the enemy and his vast host of fallen angels. If they can get Christians wrapped up in producing human good, they offer no threat nor resistance to Satan’s endeavor. And this is exactly where most Christians function from… deep in the deceit of the devil’s strategies.”

 The word of God says that the devil deceives the whole world (Rev 12:9) and that includes Christians (2 Co 2:11; 11:3,4). Paul writes in 2 Co 11:15  that the devil sends out servants of righteousness to teach people how to do good, and in I Corinthians 3 that believers are not only capable of producing both divine good and human good but that they will ultimately be judged by the type of work they produced in life.

Even the unbeliever will be judged not for his sins (since all sins were judged on the Cross), but for his deeds according to Rev 20:12,13.

So in many ways, the issue in the Christian life isn’t so much our personal sins which Christ paid for on the cross and which we need only confess to be restored to fellowship, but whether we’re performing human good or divine good. And the difference between them can be difficult to discern.

Form of Godliness

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Tuesday I began a bit of musing on the problem of human good and today, I’m going to continue that. I started with the statement, “If the unbeliever can do it, it’s not the Christian way of life” and used morality as an example.

Another example is that of religion and ritual. An unbelieving Jew could bring an animal for sacrifice, fulfill tenets of the Law, tithe, give and persecute those who were not Jews. Likewise today an unbeliever can attend church regularly, eat a wafer, drink some juice, pray, sing, weep, give money, etc. Many of these actions are things Christians are commanded to do in the New Testament, but if the Unbeliever can do it, it’s not the Christian way of life. So while we are to do those things, they’re still not the Christian life.

An unbeliever can study the Bible. Many Old Testament scholars, particuarly in regard to languages, were unbelievers. Many of the men who translated the Bible into the King James English were unbelievers.

Saul of Tarsus, that Hebrew of Hebrews, knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards and had it all memorized. He studied daily and strove to fulfill the Law. He persecuted Christians with great zeal, believing he was serving the Lord. But he was an unbeliever.

So studying and reading the Bible, quoting it and memorizing scriptures, being a Bible scholar, is not in itself the Christian way of life either, though studying it and knowing it is vital to living the Christian way of life.

What’s interesting about unbelievers or even non-Spirit filled believers studying the Bible is that they aren’t going to be able to understand it.  The naturally minded man cannot understand the things of God.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 1Co 2:12-14

This explains to some degree the passage in 2 Timothy that speaks of those who have a form of the Christian life, and who are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 2Ti 3:7

According to Vine’s Expository Dictonary, the word for form  is morphosis, which is a form or an outline, an image or impress, an outward semblance — but one which is  more than just an outward facade, which would have been schema. Such people have an inward form of the Christian life as well, which I take to mean that they are not just putting on an act. They actually believe that they’re doing the right thing.  They believe they are in the light, thus always seeking to learn… but never coming to truth because they’re doing it in their souls, without the power of the Spirit.

The Problem of Human Good

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Since I wrote about the problem of human good last week, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit.  I love the way God combines events from one’s life, information from class, words spoken by friends and enemies, things heard on the radio or TV, songs and even words from classes taught decades ago… to encourage one to grapple with a concept.  

That’s what He’s been doing lately with this concept for me, and when I asked Him what He wanted me to write about for today’s post, it seemed He said to write about what I’ve been grappling with. I protested that whatever I wrote wouldn’t be finished or clear, because my thinking on it isn’t yet clear. Which of course, He knows. But in writing about it here, I can set down the ideas to see how they fit together and where they might lead.

The first thing to set down is that human good may look like the Christian way of life to many, but it is not. The Christian life is a supernatural way of life. If the ubeliever can do something, my pastor says, than that thing is not the Christian way of life. It may be part of the Christian life, but it is not the core of it.

Morality, for example, is something the unbeliever can do. I know, because I was a very moral unbeliever. I didn’t lie, cheat, steal, fornicate, do drugs, murder…smoke, drink, defy authority (at least not openly), rack up debts I could never pay… I worked hard, tried to be fair and honest, didn’t litter, was kind to animals… I know other unbelievers who are also moral.

The idea that the Ten Commandments constitute the Christian Way of Life is a teaching that has been around for some time and believed by many to be a manifestation of what it means to be a Christian. (Worse, some even believe that keeping them is the way of salvaton)  But the Ten Commandments were given as part of the Law to the nation of Israel as a means of stabilizing society. They were for everyone when they were given — believer and unbeliever —  and remain so to this day.

As Church age believers — Christians– we are no longer under the Law spiritually, but we are still required to observe God’s laws of divine establishment and to respect the four institutions of free will, marriage, family and nationalism that God has set up for all people. As those institutions are attacked today, the stability of our nation suffers, so it’s not like they don’t matter. Nevertheless, observing those divinely appointed laws is not the Christian way of life. Part of it, but not it.

As I said, the Christian life is a supernatural way of life.  The naturally minded man can’t even understand it, let alone execute it. The Bible says we must worship God in Spirit and in truth, that God gives us the power to live the life He wants us to live and that power resides not in our flesh — not in our self-discipline or our loving personalities or our earnest desire to serve — but in His word as it permeates and infuses our thinking and in the Spirit when He controls our souls.

If one is not filled with the Spirit one can be moral all day and it’s nothing. It’s human good — nothing but wood, hay and straw. The Pharisees who crucified Jesus were moral, religious, upstanding people. Yet most of them were unbelievers.

So morality is not the Christian way of life. The Christian way of life goes way beyond morality…

To Get and Acquire

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I woke up this morning reflecting on Sunday’s post, specifically Genesis 4:1 where it says, “Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.””

Two things struck me. The first was that “Cain” means “to get or acquire”  or “gotten one”.  Eve had gotten this manchild with the help of the Lord. Why would she say such a thing if she’d “gotten” children before? And why would the Holy Spirit have Moses record it? 

Secondly, the significance of the idea of getting or acquiring. It occurred to me that the very first act Adam and the woman performed after the fall was one of human good: seeing they were naked, they tried to make things right between themselves by covering themselves with fig leaves. By this act they sought to get or acquire reconciliation. Peace. Normality.

Then, after the fall and leaving the garden, the action first noted by the Holy Spirit as being displeasing to God is also an act of  human good performed by the one whose name means “to get or acquire”.  Cain offered the work of his hands, the fruits and vegetables, products of the earth instead of the blood of the slain lamb he was supposed to have offered.

 (This is indicated by God’s rebuke in vs 6,7; and by the precedent set by God’s provision of the animal skins for Adam and the woman in Gen 3:21 — skins mean an animal had to die for them to be covered, a perfect metaphor for the work of Christ on the cross).

Trying to substitute his own works and efforts for what God had already provided not only showed Cain’s unbelieving state, but also something that I think is the underpinning of human depravity: human good. The desire to get or acquire God’s favor by one’s own effort or merits or righteousness.

Cain’s sins of jealousy, anger and murder came afterward in reaction to the failure of his plan and the thwarting of his desire. (Though technically I suppose that the arrogance underpinning the very idea of human good is the real depravity. It just doesn’t look depraved.)

So many make such a big deal out of sin, but it’s really human good and independence from God that’s the problem. Jesus already paid for everyone’s sins and no one will be judged for them in the end. Instead, they’ll be judged by their deeds. Were they righteous deeds, performed in the power of the Spirit by a perfect individual, or where they human good?

That tree of the knowledge of good and evil… that wasn’t  the knowledge of divine good. They already knew about divine good, because they’d been walking with God every day in the cool of the evening. No, that good was human good, which is a part of evil.

And yet, it looks so good. It feels so good. It feels so right. It is so darned hard to see someone who is sweet and nice and “loving” and doing all these nice things as being a wicked sinner. Human good does not seem gross to us, but in God’s eyes it is as filthy menstrual rags. (Is 64:6 )

I think human good is one of the biggest obstacles not just to admitting you need a savior and believing in Christ, but to really living the Christian way of life.

“Woe to those who call evil good…who substitute darkness for light…” Is 5:20

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Pro 14:12; 16:25

“Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts.” Pro 21:2

“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.”  I Cor 3:11-13 

The problem of human good doesn’t get near enough the attention that it should. And that suits the enemy just fine…

Storms and Pressure Cookers

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I was in the process of replying to Gayle’s comment on my last post Flestered, when I realized not only was I going on a bit too long in a comment, but that what I was saying would make a good regular post. So I decided to put it here.

Gayle had made mention of God’s plan not being for us to be diving into a pressure cooker of our own making. At least I think that’s what she meant.  If not, oh well, at the least my misunderstanding has prompted a new post…

I am well aware of the phenomenon of creating pressure cookers for ourselves and then diving into them… Martha, all worried and bothered about so many things comes to mind. And I’ve certainly dived into my share of pressure cookers of my own making.

However, I don’t feel like I’ve done that this time, but rather the pressure cooker has just come up around me. Rather like that storm that came up around the disciples in John 6 in our Basics Class lesson Tuesday night. I LOVED that lesson. It was so perfect for where I am.

I’m just looking at it all whirling about, all these things, all these people and animals and voices telling me to do this and that, asking for this and that… demanding I make up scenarios regarding the future, which I am not able to see, lacking omniscience, and then, having made them, put everything into place to deal with them, only to have others come in and change it all, or demand somethiing different…

The storm imagery from John 6: 15-21 was fantastic, and I loved that Jesus knew exactly what He was sending the disciples into when He told them to get into the boats without Him and cross to the other side, that He knew exactly how much they could handle and that He came to them at just the right time. I loved that they were struggling with the oars, rowing and rowing and not really getting anywhere and as soon as they welcomed Him into the boat… poof. The boat was at their destination.

They’d just heard the great dissertation on how He was God in chapter 5, just seen Him feed the five thousand in the beginning of Ch 6, probably still had those twelve baskets of leftover bread and fish… It was all a test and even though it was dark and cold and scary and probably VERY uncomfortable, they had only to look into those baskets and recall what they knew… Who He was, what He could do and the fact that He’d sent them out there Himself. The storm was no accident and nothing of their making…

So, this lesson has just affirmed more and more what God seems to be showing me lately and that’s that my situation is exactly the way He wants it to be and that He will guide me on a moment by moment basis through it. He will show me, at the moment needed, which, if any, of the many activities facing me is the one I’m to do next. If the other things don’t get done. Oh well. It may not be time yet. It may be I won’t have to do them at all.

Because there’s always time to do the Will of God, but it’s not always the will of God to do all the things we have opportunity or pressure to do!

Flestered

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We started watching the first season of NCIS last Saturday and in the first episode, Gibbs is in the corridor of Air Force One with his gun aimed at the back of a terrorist whom he has told to freeze. Instead, the terrorist turns slowly toward him maintaining his pretense that he’s here to help as he asks what is going on and didn’t someone call for a doctor?  Except that as he comes around he raises the automatic weapon he’s just pilfered from the plane’s armory and begins to fire, spraying bullets up the corridor Gibbs’ way. Gibbs doesn’t blink, doesn’t falter, doesn’t waver. He fires two quick rounds and the guy drops. He never loses his focus.

I loved that scene so much I had to watch it again.  What a wonderful illustration of poise in time of pressure.

Today it has become especially useful. My life has devolved once more into chaos. There are all these things I “should” do, and all these things I want to do, as well, but seemingly have no time for.

The things I “should” do?  Finish getting the new website set up, get the blog address corrected on the old one, contribute to the Amazon Author site that’s been set up… I was advised by the BHP marketing department to make a video trailer. I have a blog post to do, since I missed doing one yesterday. My office is a cluttered mess and I want to get a special picture I bought for my birthday hung up before the rapture comes. I need to start the next book, declutter my files, and do some research reading. I have miscellaneous requests from friends, to talk, go to lunch, etc. I have doctor appointments to set up for myself and to take my mother to.

Then there’s the regular stuff around the house, which I’ve not been doing, because events have impacted my sleep – late hours combined with sunrise at 5am… Yesterday after driving half an hour across town to see the rheumatologist about my hand, and back again, I was exhausted. Without motivation. Yet those “should,” and “need to” and “must” voices in my head continued to hammer me.

Plus it turns out I have an ailment – a “syndrome” – once known by the acronym CREST, now just referred to as “limited cutaneous scleroderma.” They don’t understand the cause, except that it seems to be auto-immune generated, and they don’t have treatments. This is an annoyance but nothing life threatening. You have it if you have three of the five symptoms laid out in the acronym. I have Raynaud’s syndrome, which is the R: when it’s cold, your extremities turn white or blue and get very Cold. My left big toe turns white and gets numb. And in the winter, as I work at the computer, my left hand has oddly become very cold whereas my right remains normal. Now I realize it’s part of Raynaud’s.

E is esophageal dysfunction.  “Do you have trouble swallowing?” he asked. I laughed because my husband and I joke that I’m probably going to die from choking on my food. Yes, I have trouble swallowing. A few years ago I could no longer swallow the calcium caplets I was taking and had to go to chewables. I cannot choke down a Nyquil to save my life. I thought it was just getting old, but no. Part of the syndrome.

The last symptom I have is Sclerodactyly, which means the skin on my fingers has tightened and stiffened. How weird is that? It’s worse on my right hand than on my left and I’m not sure how the trigger finger is related, if it is. It might be something that began on its own, or something caused by this other thing. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do but live with it. And since there can be other more serious elements to this condition (pulmonary hypertension) I will have to go get a couple of tests. Which means more doctor’s appointments.

So there’s all that.  And the rheumatologist thinks my toe is broken because of how swollen it still is two weeks after injuring it. Not that there’s anything I can do about that, either, but it does make wearing shoes painful and walking Quigley a new challenge.

So when I take Quigley and he pulls and jerks and I have to resist or deal with it, my toe is not happy. Nor is my back. So I think, what I really need to do is just commit to several hours a day for the next five weeks and work with him… He’s never officially been trained to heel…

In addition to all that, which is nowhere near my complete list, when I do start tackling things, they always seem to snarl into complications. I try to answer reader mail, but run out of labels to autograph and can’t print new ones until I go to the store for ink…

I go out to Office Max to buy ink and a new fluorescent bulb for my desk light and they don’t sell the bulbs (even though that’s where I bought the desk and the light). So I have to go online and the bulb only costs $6. The postage would be more. What to do? Get two bulbs? Will it still work by the time I need a new one? Will I even remember where I put it?

I start to work at the computer, but my carpal tunnel flares up.  Or I bang my poor swollen toe into a chair and have to go sit down with the ice bag again. These are small things, but when you have entire days of them, it gets old. And frustrating.

Then of course there is the next book that I had – ahem — planned to start yesterday, except I lay around and dozed instead.

What does all this have to do with that NCIS scene I mentioned earlier? All these things are like bullets spraying around me. They demand my attention and if I try to give it to them I just get flestered (yes, flestered. It was a typo, but I like it.  It not only melds flesh and flustered, it looks like festered… the perfect word for the state I’m trying to describe!) These are little things, but it’s a constant stream. You can’t deal with them in any kind of logical way, because there’s too many of them and they’re coming too fast and each is hitting on an almost subconscious level. Or at least, a peripheral level, where you’re aware of them, but not how they’re fragementing your thinking and emotions.

Instead, my thoughts should be focused on only one thing: the target. The goal:

“The self-motivated believer has identified his primary objective in life: spiritual maturity, which glorifies Christ. This objective becomes the criterion for interpreting any situation that may arise. Every decision and every course of action supports this chosen objective. [The application of] Bible doctrine takes first priority… you build your life on [it].” ~ From Christian Integrity by Col R. B. Thieme, Jr.

Living in a state of being flestered is not part of spiritual maturity, nor will it lead to that. Neither are guilt, condemnation and anxiety. Moreover, if I write down all the things I “have” to do or want to do in an attempt to sort through them all (focusing on the problem, trying to take control and figure out the solution for myself) I only increase my flestered state and move into paralysis. So I have to step back and recall: there’s a reason things are the way they are. God’s ordained every detail in my life for my highest and best and most of them, I’m learning, are forms of affliction. Light affliction – maybe even VERY light affliction – but affliction nonetheless. Here for my blessing. To root out false thinking and make me stronger.

Okay, Lord, I’m letting go of my lists and my flestered state. Again. What do you want me to do?

Hmm. Well, for one, it appears He wanted me to write this blog post because… ta da! … Here it is. When I had no intention of writing it. When I only sat down to work through my flestered state.

Christian Worldview in my Fiction

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In the process of moving to WordPress and trying to figure out how everything works, I’ve not only visited Amazon, I’ve also been making brief forays out to read other peoples’ blogs, a practice I gave up after the chaos of trying to get Return of the Guardian-King written, and maintained throughout the chaos of writing The Enclave.

When Becky Miller commented here last week, she drew me over to her blog, A Christian Worldview of Fiction where she was once again discussing… well, a Christian worldview of fiction. Given the title of her blog, this is hardly surprising, nor the first time she has posted on this subject. But while I’ve read her past posts with interest, and thought I  should have something to say on the matter, I could never seem to put my thoughts on the subject into any kind of coherent discourse.

This time however, she revealed that the whole discussion of a Christian worldview began when World magazine ran a contest asking for stories from a Christian worldview and the email group she was on at the time began discussing what exactly the editors meant by “a Christian worldview.” A discussion, she said,  that was essentially an exploration of “how our Christianity plays out in our fiction.”

And, upon reading that phrase, I suddenly found myself with something to say. I don’t know that I would want to define what specific qualities might be included in a book for it to be considered written from a Christian worldview, but I do know how my Christianity plays out in my fiction.

Anyone who does much reading at all about how to write will soon encounter the oft-given advice to write what you know, write what you care deeply about, what you enjoy, and what you struggle with. Don’t be afraid to be honest in your portrayals, to lay out what you know and believe whether you think readers will like it or not.

So what I know, what I care deeply about, what I enjoy and struggle with is my Christianity. God, the truths of God’s word, the application of it. The failure in it. The recovery and continuing onward. My relationship with Him; with His Son… Those are what I write about.

Growing up as an unbeliever I always had the idea that going to church was about going to some special building, singing special songs, listening to someone in a robe drone on about things that had no relevance, and following a bunch of rules. There was never a personal relationship with God involved. There were rules to follow (which I’m discovering has been a much greater part of my life than I ever imagined, even as an unbeliever). People felt good about themselves, felt they were pleasing to God when they followed the rules. In fact, if you followed the rules you went to heaven; if you didn’t, you went to hell.

I didn’t buy it. I remember as a teenager commenting in a discussion about religion that no one was perfect. I didn’t see how anyone could be bad enough to deserve eternal hell, but I also didn’t see how anyone could be good enough to go to heaven. So I opted for reincarnation.  The perfect solution. (Well, I was only 15 and this is what my mother had come to believe at the time.) 

When I actually believed in Christ and began to learn what the Bible had to say and what the Christian way of life was really all about,  it was so rich, so alive, so full that I was bursting with enthusiasm to show the world what it really was, not the stale, dead thing I’d thought. I was so jazzed. It was  cooler than the coolest transformation to hero story you could come up with. And still is.

That desire’s never really changed. I want to depict in my fiction the wonderful ways of God, His character, His amazing plan, the incredible relationship we can have with Him, how it all makes sense now, when previously it really didn’t. How much more marvelous it is than the dreary unending toil of being reborn again and again as in each lifetime you struggle to make yourself better and better until finally you can be absorbed into some impersonal cosmic consciousness!  Or something. I’m not sure I ever get beyond the endless rebirths when I was 15.

 We live in a time when it’s not “cool” to act like you have answers. Postmodernism says there aren’t any answers. Or that each person’s answers are specific to them and no one dare intimate there might be a set of universal truths that apply to everyone. But I feel like I do have answers. So many of the most important, most disturbing questions I’d had in my 21 years as an unbeliever have been answered in God’s word. So many of the conundrums other people shake their heads over, are answered in the pages of Scripture. If only they could see it.

The Bible isn’t a bunch of contradictions or moldy myths, set down for us to pick and choose from like the offerings in a cafeteria. It’s an amazingly coherent document that’s also alive. It’s real. And so is the God who wrote it. And anyone who really wants to know Him and is willing to put in the time to seek for Him can know Him.

That’s what drives me to write. That and the fact that God’s called me to do it and put the burning for that task inside me.