The Sword Room

What a holiday season it has been. First time in a few years we were able to have all six of our children home at once. All across the world people gathered in homes and enjoyed the warmth of family life. Others not so fortunate longed to be close to loved ones but were unable to do so. We were so blessed to have everyone present for several days of eating, relaxing, and exchanging gifts.

When I think about the relational nature of human beings I am hard-pressed to understand how unbelief can exist, when it seems so obvious to me as a regenerated believer that in our human interactions we are mirroring the fellowship of the Triune Godhead. Then, as I look out my window at the trees, the sky, and the snow, I contemplate the glory of the creator with thanksgiving. Even when I feel convicted for sin I am grateful that God created me in His image with a moral consciousness. Unbelief seems so absurd.

Two of my sons flew in from California and I took them to see my parents before they flew out. My parents are 84 and doing well, although I am facing the fact that although it seems like they will be around forever, such is not in fact the case. I am so thankful to have been raised in a family where there was love and support. After dropping the boys at the airport I was able to enjoy a long breakfast with an old friend, and our conversation was sprinkled with a few theological jabs here and there. (He is Arminian and I am, well, you know.) Then on the trip north up the freeway I stopped with another brother for lunch. When I first met this brother a few years back he was a staunch Arminian too, but now he is a five-pointer like me. Not that I want to convert my other buddy, but like Paul, I would that all men were even as I, except for this gut.

Thank God for Christian fellowship, and even for theological debate. It is all good, and in my mind the fact that we can think abstractly and metaphysically is further evidence that we are His image bearers. For this reason unbelief seems so illogical and unreasonable to me. To deny the existence of the true and living God is to me like saying all existence is illusion, as in classic Buddhism. But even in Buddhism the illusion exists. I think therefore I am.

This was Anselm’s argument. The fact that we as finite humans can imagine and contemplate the infinite Creator is evidence of His existence. A life built on unbelief is a senseless incoherent contradiction. 

Happy New Year. Keep on believing and trusting in Him.

The earliest Christmas I remember was when I was four and we lived at 17309 33rd Avenue South in what is now Sea Tac Washington.  In those days it was just my mom and dad and the four brothers, Tim and Tom, Pete and Chris. On Christmas, as usual, we went over to my dad’s brother Melvin’s place in Burien to open some of our presents. Melvin was the postmaster of Burien and had a nice big house. My dad’s parents, Axel and Helga Holdaas used to come for Christmas, along with my aunts Helen and Anna. They spent their time in the kitchen making leutefisk and lefse–the main components of a Norwegian holiday meal. There were also the Norwegian version of Swedish meatballs, boiled potatoes, and some kind of cooked vegetable. I learned to love homemade chocolate cream pie at those dinners–still my favorite kind of pie. Except right now fresh apple pie would be my favorite if I had some. The main thing I remember was my dad telling us boys that even if we didn’t like the old-man sweaters our aunts gave us to say we did anyway.

Oh, and one year all four of us boys received red RSV Bibles from our grandparents. Gee, thanks, grandma and grandpa. Not!

Then the next morning we would get up and open more presents with my other grandparents–my mom’s folks, who lived about a mile away on 168th just off Military Road. That year when I was four we got a big Radio Flyer wagon you could fit three of us in with the fourth guy pulling it down the sidewalk. It could also hold Jerry Jones from across the street and one other kid. The neighbor kids, Steven and Allen Linville rode in that wagon a few times too, as did Vanny (Vance) and Wes Butler, who lived on the block at that time. That  year my little brother Chris got a doll for Christmas and I got my first guitar. We used to tease Chris about the doll, because he was a boy and boys don’t play with dolls.

I enjoyed the many great Christmas celebrations of my childhood. But when I became a believer in Christ in October of 1971, a few months out of high school, it all made sense in a new way. I remember one snowy night in December going over to my friend Jim’s house in 1971. Jim had been away at college in Minnesota, and when we went down to his room in the basement I told him about how I had been saved a couple months earlier. His dad was a local pastor, so when I told Jim the news he took me right up to see his dad. After some questioning by Jim’s dad at the kitchen table, they concluded that my testimony was on the level, and Jim’s  mom pulled a prayer list out of a drawer and crossed my name off. I wonder how long my name had been on that list.

That Christmas I bought each member of my family a copy of the New Testament called Good News for Modern Man. By then I had wiped the dust from the Bible my Holdaas grandparents had given me years earlier and had read most of it. That Bible literally fell apart within a year and had many underlined verses. People underlined verses like crazy in those days.

Anyway I consider December 25, 1971 to by my first official Christmas. I hope this holiday season you will celebrate Jesus as I have been able to do these 39 years since I learned the true reason for the season.

This week I attended a pre-Christmas brunch where one of the guest speakers quoted the popular line from the Victor Hugo novel, Les Miserable, that he who loves another human being has seen the face of God. I didn’t even bother looking up the exact quote because it seems to pop up everywhere. Whatever the precise wording and original meaning, it is clear that the way it is being applied today is in the sense that in loving another human being one somehow experiences God. Since the guy who quoted the phrase at the brunch is supposedly a Christian, I got to thinking about how it might reflect at least a grain of truth.

So when an atheist loves another atheist, does this experience reveal the face of God? How about when a man loves his wife, or a mother her child? Is there a sense in which one sees God in this? In a loose sense perhaps. Love started with God. Even as all true knowledge is on loan to us as humans from our all-knowing Creator, all love is in some sense a gift from God to us. Love, like anything else God has given us to enjoy in the created order, is designed ultimately to reveal His glory.

God is love (1 John 4:8). Notice who the subject is in that sentence–God. Love is the predicate. Sometimes humans invert the sentence to say that love is God, and that is false. From there it is assumed that the path to God is through loving others–in other words, humanism. But we know from Scripture that loving God is foundational to loving others and that if we do not love God first we do not rightly understand the true meaning of love. Even as one has not known anything as he ought to know if he does not love God, so too he has not loved as he ough to love if he has not first loved God. And that pushes us back one step farther to the truth that we love because He first loved us.

So to say that the path to seeing God’s face is loving other people is to invert the truth from God is love to love is God. All the love on the horizontal plane does not equate to one ounce of love on the vertical plane. If you have not experienced God’s saving regenerating love you have no ability or desire to love the true God. As a believer who has experienced the unconditional love of God through Christ you have a frame of reference for loving your brethren, your spouse, your neighbor, and even your enemy.

To start with humanistic love is to assume that love exists in its own right independently of God. Thinking that loving others will somehow lead to God is similar to what happened in the realm of knowledge when the inhabitants of Babel tried to build a tower to the heavens to reach God. It doesn’t work that way.

I wish so-called Christians would stop trading the words of Jesus for the words of men like Victor Hugo just to sound cool or politically correct. Strictly speaking, to love another human being is not to see the face of God. Just another example of humanistic drivel.

Poop–one  of the first things a baby learns how to do, and one of the first words of his vocabulary. Not much has changed since I was a kid–youngsters still talk about poop and get into trouble for it. Only now they get timed out instead of swatted. Back when I was a kid in the 1950′s there were kids and dogs everywhere. Without today’s leash laws the dogs ran loose with the kids and left the neighborhood yards littered with their calling cards. One phenomenon of that nobler era, a rarity even then, was the fabled albino dog poop (pictured left). To a little kid in the 1950′s the discovery of the snow-white turds was like striking gold. Because the white dog poop did not come in the form of a steaming load, but rather as crusty hard logs, it could easily be carried by hand or even in a pocket.

My kids and grandkids do not believe my stories about the albino canine feces, but the photo above, along with the many others on google attest to its reality. There is even a Facebook page devoted to the subject. The question is: why is this form of dog poop so rare? One reason is that leash laws and pooper-scooper technology have decreased the shelf life of dog poop dramatically. Dog food production has also exacerbated the problem. In past years people threw bones to their dogs routinely, and most dog food contained bone meal. When a dog deposited bone-rich turds that bleached in the sun for prolonged periods, albino feces was the product. In today’s corrupt culture a dog turd just doesn’t have a chance at immortality. Just one more good thing from the old days that has gone the way of the hula hoop. Where have you gone, Joe Di’Maggio……….

You might wonder why this post appeared on a Christian blog, or what it has to do with God or Scripture. I was just asking myself the same question, and if any of you come up with a good answer I would like to hear it. I have been under the weather for the past week with a virus and also fighting stubborn medication-resistant high blood pressure. Feeling a little goofy today, but hopefully will be back at 100% soon.

Judge not, that you be not judged (Matthew 7:1)

These words of the Lord are often quoted out of context, and since we discussed judging last night at fight club the topic is still fresh in my mind. First let’s talk about what the word “Judge” actually means in the context of the passage above. The Greek word used denotes the passing of a sentence of condemnation on another person based on superficial and distorted observation. It is a hypocritical kind of judgment because the person making it is in the position of trying to remove a speck from the eye of another when he himself has a log in his own eye. This kind of arrogant judgment was characteristic of the pharisees, who while they were careful to strain the gnat out of their cup, ended up swallowing a camel.  The bottom line is that we are in no position to authoritatively determine the true spiritual condition of another person or to make a pronouncement as to  their eternal destiny.

But this is not the sense in which we hear Jesus’ words used today. In this culture of moral relativism not judging means not evaluating thoughts, words, and actions of either others or ourselves with any kind of moral or ethical authority. Of course there are behaviors which all people would deem immoral–rape and murder, for example. Most often these actions are said to be wrong because they hurt other people. But if a believer states a moral judgment on, say, certain sexually forbidden practices, then he is said to be judging–which according to many is a violation of Jesus’ prohibition of judging.

But this is clearly not a biblical conclusion, but is based on pagan humanistic relativism. In the case of the Corinthian man who was having illicit sex with his step mother, Paul tells his readers he has already judged the man (1 Corinthians 5:3)–and he was not even present in Corinth to confront the offender! He tells his readers that they must judge the fornicator (v. 12) and excommunicate him until he repents.

In today’s world even Christians have all but lost a sense of biblical antithesis. What does this mean? In means that the Bible speaks of human life and action in dichotomous terms–life and death, light and darkness, fellowship and alienation, righteousness and wickedness, heaven and hell. Jesus put it this way: He who is not for me is against me (Matthew 12:30). In other words, you are either a born again child of God or you are an enemy of God.

How judgmental of the Lord! Sounds like maybe He violated His own principle.

Or not

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I have always found that the lazier I am the more tired I get. If I sleep in I go through the day feeling more exhausted than if I had risen early and worked diligently. In the same way there is something invigorating about tight committed fellowship with a small band of brothers. You know how you hear sometimes about guys who fought shoulder to shoulder in combat together–how  tight the bond is between them. This is also true spiritually, I think. That is why I enjoy Spiritual Fight Club (SFC) so much. In fact, we just revised the rules and I thought I’d share them today. Here they are:

RULES OF SPIRITUAL FIGHT CLUB (SFC)

2. You believe that the Bible is the inspired infallible word of God and that it is your final authority in matters of faith and living the Christian life.

3. You recognize that the Christian life is a fight and that you cannot gain victory without the power of God and support of likeminded brothers.

4. You agree by your participation in SFC to engage in battle 24/7/365 against your spiritual enemies–the world, flesh, and devil, using the means of grace God provides.

5. You recognize that since you are dead to sin and alive to God no one can force you into sin and disobedience to God–you sin because you want to and choose to.

6. When you do fall into sin you covenant together with your SFC brothers to confess it and repent of it immediately, availing yourself of the cleansing blood of Christ.

7. You are aware that the enemy will seek to defeat you with his three trump cards of laziness, lust, and lies, and you will commit yourself to yield no quarter in these areas.

8. With specific reference to laziness, you will spend at least one hour per day in the word and prayer. You will attend the church of your choice every Sunday, unless prohibited by illness or other unforeseen reasons. When assigned work is given, such as memory verses and Bible study preparation materials, you will put in the effort and come on time prepared to participate. You will pray for each group member by name daily. You will seek gainful employment and will do your best to be a faithful steward of God’s provision.

9. With respect to lust you agree to abstain from all forms of sexual immorality, including intercourse, oral sex, petting and fondling, sodomy, and the viewing of pornography. If you are single you will not date or enter into amorous relationships with pagan women under the guise of “witnessing“ to them. You also agree to repent of lustful thoughts as they arise. You further agree to abstain from drunkenness and the use of marijuana and other illegal drugs.

10. With respect to lies you will seek truthfulness in your dealings with God and others. If you are struggling with sin you will confess it and not rationalize it. In the event that you disclose a struggle with sin to the other members of SFC it is a non-negotiable rule that if you request confidentiality, then what is said in SFC stays in SFC. Violation of this rule can result in expulsion from the group. Also, if you have a problem with the behavior or attitude of another brother in the group you will not complain to others until you have confronted the brother personally with your concern–either privately or in the group.

11. During the SFC meetings you will follow the general rules of courtesy: You will listen to others and try to understand their perspective without interrupting, arguing, blaming, yelling, or dominating the conversation. You will not deviate from the meeting format except by mutual consent of the other members.