(considering) 8:28

Implications of the Sovereignty of God

recent posts

  • Quotes of the Day

    “Every year I am asked ‘Do I object to the celebration of Christmas?’ It’s an absurd question. As ever, my family and I will send out our Christmas cards to our Christian friends and others.”

    – Indarjit Singh, Sikh spokesman

    “To suggest celebrating Christmas and having decorations offends Muslims is absurd. Why can’t we have more nativity scenes in Britain?”

    – Shayk Ibrahim Mogra,  Spokesman, Muslim Council of Britain

    “Hindus celebrate Christmas too. It’s a great holiday for everyone living in Britain”

    – Anil Bhanot, General Secretary, UK Hindu Counci

    (all quoted in a story on Reuters)

  • The Power of Rejoicing (reflection on Phil 4:4-7)

        People often get rather anxious about life generally. Both on personal levels (will I find a good job, will I have somewhere to live, will my marriage continue, etc.) and on global levels (is global warming going to end us all, what about terrorism, etc.). Anxiousness is often thought a good and even an appropriate response to these things, and to a myriad of other problems we face in life.

    But is it good and appropriate to be anxious?

    Paul, in his letter to the Phillipians doesn’t seem to think so. Dealing directly with a situation of some stress, Paul tells his readers to “rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice”(4:4). He’s rather emphatic on the need to rejoice, and specifically in the Lord.

    There’s a very simple reason for this, as is evidenced by v.7, where it says that “the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. This is not to say that you aren’t to actually deal with problems (indeed, you are called to present them to God), but that the basis of the Christian life is a seeming exchange between us and God.

    We rejoice in the Lord, God will guard our hearts and minds.

    This isn’t a warm touchy feely thing, but a proper response to the lives we find ourselves in. That it works is evidenced by the many people who have gone before us in the faith, facing problems and persecutions far greater than the ones we face. It also makes sense that it would work. After all, as long as we are focussed on problems and anxieties, and specifically our relation to them, it is very difficult to keep hope, and very easy to be discouraged.

    But if we focus on the Lord, who is more than capable of dealing with all our anxieties, and has promised to keep us in Him if we but rejoice in him (meaning that ultimately, regardless of what else we may lose, we will get through even this). Our ultimate hope is sure, if our joy is in the Lord.

    The result is that our responses to the problems that face us are not going to simply be despair, resignation, or even grim determination, but an underlying joy as we realize that while these things that make us anxious might have been able to defeat us, they will not defeat the Lord if we would but face them rejoicing in Him.

    It is the Lord that guards us in the ways that matter ultimately, what is their to fear?

  • Online Reading (December 12, 2007)

    Atheism: A friend of a friend writes a fairly insightful review of Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am Not a Christian”. Many of the comments actually fit much of modern atheism.

    Technology: You can now download TV episodes on itunes. Yay! Now I can get the stuff I’ve been avoiding for a decade by not owning a TV.

    Media: Darell Bock comments on how Christians should respond to the many “documentaries” (and yes, I mean the scare quotes) produced to shake Christianity.

    CBC: Speaking of which, the CBC recently aired a documentary based on Tom Harpur’s “The Pagan Christ” (which I can buy at the Anglican book store here in St. John’s with study guides). The tin-foil-hat-wearing thesis is that history has lied about the EXISTENCE of Jesus.

  • Online Reading (December 11, 2007)

    Manners: A brilliant article by Mark Steyn on rudeness and the what it says about society.

    Environment: An Australian professor believes that there should be a tax on having excess children, to better help the planet.

    Canada: A young Muslim woman in Canada is murdered, and her father is in custody. There seems to have been a disagreement about her not wearing hijab to school.

    Epistemology: A thumping good article on Christian worldview is posted at The Gospel Coalition.

     Anger: Okay, I know that stories in the paper aren’t to be believed at face value. But if you read this story without getting angry, you are a far more gentle person than I.

  • A Loser in my Eyes

    area-photo-r.jpgOne of the side effects of a public health care system such as the one in Canada is that every hospital is honestly a study in class dynamics. I notice this as I cut through the local hospital on my way home from the university (something I often do so that I can avail myself of the Tim Horton’s in the cafeteria). I am faced nboth with the poorest of our society, and the very apex of culture, the high priest of our religio-scientific denial of mortality: the doctor.

    As I was walking through today though, I noticed in myself two completely distinct views of people. It was so drastic that I almost wondered if I had caught some kind of multiple personality disorder on my way past the psych ward (not a possibility, BTW, such illnesses are not caught by casual contact).

    As I first passed people who were not of my socio-economic class (an upper middle-class educated white male), I found myself thinking “what a loser”. Yet after thinking a little on a text I’m preaching on this Sunday (Phil 2:5-11, I found myself noting the (for lack of a better word) beauty of the people around me who I had put down as losers mere moments earlier.

    What had happened? I think philosophers get a little bit towards the truth when they note (as Kant does) that our understanding of reality is mitigated through our own conditions of possible experience, and thus are limited in scope. Or when psychologists note that our expectations of of sense experience actually alter the sense experience we have.

    I also note that there is truth about the people that I see. In some sense they’re all beautiful (though not in the same ways). These are not simply subjective concepts in my mind, but actual facts about them that I see depending on the glasses I use to see them.

    So how did a passage about the value of Jesus, his humility, and his glorifcation alter my perspective?  It was quite simple. The loser I saw in the others was in my own eyes.

    When I forget God, even for a moment, I am prone to actually place someone else in the throne of godhood. Most notably, me.  When I do that, other people become threats to that god, their value, even if it actually is in them, become heretical possible usurpers, something that can cast down the god of my own value. They have beauty in different ways that I do not have, and I cannot countenance that, so in my own eyes, I deride them as “losers”.

    This is not to say that people are all the same in beauty (they aren’t, we’re all differently beautiful), or that all decisions people make are beneficial to them and society (they aren’t). but that fundamentally they are valuable, and are all giftd by God to fulfill roles in the world around us.

    When I call them losers, though, I am actually speaking about their value over all, and not on their choices, sins, beauties or gifts. In that point, I am protecting my god of me. Quite literally, the loser that I see them to be is “in my eyes”.

    But then Christ enters view. Both humble and glorious he casts down the god of me, and replaces it with himself. The result is that I gain an attitude of humility as I place Christ where he should be (on a throne where even my knee will bow, and my tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the father), and then forget my own godhood.

    The result is drastic. Seeing Jesus as glorious means that the beauty of others, or even myself, is no l;onger an attack on my God. They will never compare to Jesus in that way, and in fact by their beauty and gifts reaffirm the value and beauty of Christ. As such, I can see them as they are; not by venerating myself as god, or even by venerating them, or society, or humanity  generally, but by simply seeing them as they are. Beautiful creations of a loving and just God.

    Humility, and love of others, is based in the glory of God. Indeed, so is seeing the truth of people. It is not what’s in my eyes that is true. It’s who’s in my heart. jesus2.jpg