Read the Bible this Year (make this your January 4th's year's resolution)

Get your Bible and read it. Just do it. Read the whole thing and read it soon.

1) Follow a reading plan if that would help you. There is a great collection of reading plans on Justin Taylor's blog. There is even a place where you can download a podcast audio version and just listen to it each day.

2) Or, print off a list of all the chapters in the Bible and check them off as you read them. And do it aggressively. Don Whitney has a list that you can print out and place in your Bible. This is the method I'm following this year.

3) Just treat the Bible like a book, albeit a big one, and pick it up and read it. Don't read many other things until you have finished it.

Reading the Bible is so important. If you are a Christian, understand that it is one of the primary ways that God communicates to you. If you are not a Christian, God also wants to communicate to you through it (but I know you probably don't believe me). Even if you don't believe that, you should at least care about it in terms of the impact it has had on history and your culture. If you think it is full of contradictions, fine, believe that, but read it and then let's talk about it. You are wrong to think that it is full of contradictions, but I can't prove it to you until you have read the whole thing. Plus, it is never a good idea to make general claims ("the Bible is full of contradictions") when you don't know anything about the subject. So, read it.

If you are not sure how to study the Bible, don't worry about it yet. Just read it anyways. There is a reason why you don't have to worry about that just yet, but you won't understand the reason until you have read the whole thing.

Alright, quit reading this and go read your Bible if you haven't done that yet today. That's why the blog is called "Take and read, take and read." For more of an explanation see the "About Me" in the sidebar.

Responding to Ivan, pt. 4 (or This House is Not Made of Glass)

This post is a part of a series:

Rebellion

Responding to Ivan, pt. 1

Responding to Ivan, pt. 2

Responding to Ivan, pt. 3

**Please feel free to join the discussion. Your comments will help me as I continue the series**

But back to my original point, I say that it is inconceivable to create a world in which some greater good is accomplished at the expense of even one little baby having to suffer and be killed. My moral code dictates that there is no end result that would be worth killing a baby. For what end result would you be willing to kill an infant? I hope that you wouldn’t do it for anything. You would declare the murder of a baby to be wrong. Is this not the point that so many pro-lifers appeal to? You claim that you know that this is wrong because you have a moral code, a law within, that came to you from God. You even go as far as to say that it reflects his very nature. Yet, in the very next breath you are willing to tell me that this same God that gave you your understanding that the murder of babies is wrong, is the same God who, at the beginning of time, determined to create a world in which babies would be murdered. Not only that, but a great many other horrors occur in this world which you say that he created. If there was a time when there was nothing in existence but God, and if he is then the one that brought everything into existence, then he is, in some way, responsible for that which was brought about. I do not believe your story because it does not make sense of the world.

My friend, you are still misunderstanding God’s relationship to evil. Let us look at it from another angle. St. Augustine once explained that evil is not a thing to be created. God is not the creator or author of evil because it is not a thing that could be made. You see, evil is the absence of good. What is darkness? How can you identify it? What does it taste like or feel like? These are silly questions because darkness is the absence of light.

Well, where there is light there is no darkness?

Right.

So, does that not then mean that God has abandoned us? I see a lot of darkness and I don’t see how your explanation has addressed it unless you are saying that God has fled the scene.

Certainly God has not abandoned us. He is at work among us even now. There is still evil present in the world. And evil is the absence of good, but you must think of it as a matter of degrees. Nearly everything has aspects about it that are good and things about it that are bad. However, there are varying degrees of goodness and varying degrees of evil in this world.

Allow me this loose analogy. Think of the world as a house facing east and think of God as the sun. In the dawn, those rooms in the front will be much brighter than the rooms in back of the house. The light could be so strong that one must look away. Other rooms will be more dimly lit. In these rooms there will still be some darkness. And still, other rooms, or maybe even closets, will be completely dark because the light does not reach them.

In some places it is very evident that God is good and this world He has created is good. Delicious food, companionship, well-composed music… these are just a few of the rooms in the front. Other things, say relationships, which can bring both pleasure and pain at differing times are the rooms in which there is a mixture of light. But there, in the dark corners of this world, you can see a pain and an evil that is so clearly a darkness that the light has no part of.

I do think that this is a rather clever explanation for the world we find ourselves in, but you have not explained why this is the world which God chose to make. If this world is a house and God is the sun, I can accept that. But there is still a problem. I can follow your idea that God did not create the darkness anymore than the sun creates the dark rooms of your house. But the trouble is that you also claim that God is the builder of the house. Do you not?

Yes, He is Creator, but that does not mean that He created the darkness!

Accepted. But why didn’t he make the house of glass? Why make a world in which the possibility of darkness might exist? This is the same question that I have been asking all along, yet you have offered no answer that satisfactorily addresses this fundamental question.

Incarnation, pt. 2 (or Luke 1:78-79)

"...the sunrise shall visit us
from on high
to give light to those who sit in
darkness and in the shadow of
death,
to guide our feet into the way of
peace."

In th Flesh

I just read a good post from Russell Moore answering the question of whether or not Jesus ever got sick. It is an interesting read and I encourage you to check it out. The Incarnation was and is such a startling thing.

Here's an excerpt:

"It just doesn’t seem right to us to imagine Jesus feverish or vomiting. But that’s precisely the scandal. It didn’t seem right to many to imagine Jesus as really flesh and bone, filled with blood and intestines and urine. Somehow that seemed to detract from his deity. It surely didn’t seem right to many to imagine the only begotten of the Father twisting in pain on a crucifixion stake, screaming as he drowned in his own blood. This was humiliating, undignified. That’s just the point. Jesus joined us in our humiliation, in our indignity."

Read the whole thing here.

Responding to Ivan, pt. 3 (or the Moral Law or Though You Cannot Tell from This Post, Augustine & Anselm are Two of My Favorite Saints)

This post is a part of a series:

Rebellion

Responding to Ivan, pt. 1

Responding to Ivan, pt. 2

**Please feel free to join the discussion. Your comments will help me as I continue the series**

I think that we are back to where we started. Tell me this: what reason could possibly be sufficient to make it alright to allow a little child to be starved and killed? Perhaps you are willing to say that it is alright because you have a distorted conscience. Perhaps you are mad. What sort of moral code allows for the death of an innocent so that some greater good might be accomplished? The idea that the end justifies the means has allowed for all sorts of atrocities throughout history and any decent man sees that such a stance is morally reprehensible. Your answer has done nothing to answer my question. It has simply shown that you hold your god to a low moral standard.

Ahh, you mention a moral code, but there you have a problem with your question. You appeal to a moral code – to a sense of right and wrong. You expect me to agree with you that the harming of an infant is wrong. Well, I do agree with you, but on what grounds can you say that it is wrong? To declare it to be wrong is to make a judgment that requires a standard of justice. For you, as one who does not believe in my God, you are speaking on borrowed capital when you reference the moral code or make any sort of statements about right and wrong. You want to have a law without a Lawgiver, but you cannot. Your effort to declare something as wrong works against you. It reveals that you have a concept of what is right and good.

But I object. I can have a sense of right and wrong. And I refuse to believe that it came from this God that you claim as your own. I also refuse to believe that it came from any other god. I can accept the Law because it is good for us, but I reject the notion of a Lawgiver.

But you cannot have the Law without the Lawgiver. That does not make any sense. There must be a source.

And God must be that source?

Yes.

And who gave the laws to God?

Nobody. God is the supreme being.

So, you are saying that the laws, or moral code, that we abide by must come from a source outside of us, but the laws by which God abides do not have an outside source? That is inconsistent. Why does God get to be the exception?

But you are missing the point of what it means to be God. He is the supreme being. St. Anselm described it by saying that He is that being of which no greater being can be conceived. St. Augustine baptized that grand idea of the philosophers of old and explained that God is the good, the true, and the beautiful. To be God is to be at the top. To be at the top is to be God. As such, He is source of all that is good. As Aristotle, and then St. Aquinas, explained he is the unmoved mover and the first cause. If a being gave God the moral code, then that being would be God. But let me explain another aspect that you have misunderstood. The moral code is not an arbitrary set of rules that God created or chose to enforce. Rather, they are a reflection of His nature. Everything that is good is that which is a reflection of His nature. Everything that is wrong is that which is contrary to His nature.

But God is not necessary in the picture that you just painted. You admit that if there were a being that dictated right and wrong to God, then that being would be the ultimate deity known as God. But you reject the notion of any such deity. Well, I just take it one step further. There is no need for your God. You reference the argument of the unmoved mover. That which is in motion must be put into motion. Yet, if I say that your argument then means that someone must have put God into motion, you will interject that it stops with God because it cannot continue ad infinitum. Well why not? The only reason that I can see that you would insist that it cannot continue ad infinitum is because it would make God unnecessary and that is not the conclusion that you want to reach. As quickly as you can make God the first cause I can make this world the first cause. And how can you tell me any different? Any reason that you give for why this world cannot be the first cause I can likewise flip to be a reason as to why God cannot be the first cause. This world contains order, someone must have ordered it… well, then who ordered God? If you stumbled upon a watch on the shoreline of a beach, you would understand that there had to be a watchmaker… well, who is the Watchmaker behind the watch that is God? A garden in the jungle, a jumbo-jet… there are a thousand manifestations of this argument but they all have the same problem. You say that all things must have a cause except for God, but why is God the exception? Because that is what it means to be God? Well just because you define it to be that way does not make it true. If it is fair for you to say that God is the exception, then it is fair for me to cut God out and just say that this world is the exception.

There where does you moral code come from?

I don’t know, but I don’t see that I necessarily have to know, especially if you are going to continue to affirm that it is alright for you to not know where God came from. Perhaps it is the result of evolution. Most of the moral code is good for the continuation of our species. If not that, perhaps we all have a bit of a divine spark within us that gives us our moral compass. Or perhaps I can borrow from you and say that is it simply a reflection of our nature. It is a part of who we are. If you don’t have to explain how it got to be a part of who God is, then I don’t have to explain how it got to be a part of who we are. I don’t have to know where it came from, I just need to know that it is.

But back to my original point, I say that it is inconceivable to create a world in which some greater good is accomplished at the expense of even one little baby having to suffer and be killed. My moral code dictates that there is no end result that would be worth killing a baby. For what end result would you be willing to kill an infant? I hope that you wouldn’t do it for anything. You would declare the murder of a baby to be wrong. Is this not the point that so many pro-lifers appeal to? You claim that you know that this is wrong because you have a moral code, a law within, that came to you from God. You even go as far as to say that it reflects his very nature. Yet, in the very next breath you are willing to tell me that this same God that gave you your understanding that the murder of babies is wrong, is the same God who, at the beginning of time, determined to create a world in which babies would be murdered. Not only that, but a great many other horrors occur in this world which you say that he created. If there was a time when there was nothing in existence but God, and if he is then the one that brought everything into existence, then he is, in some way, responsible for that which was brought about. I do not believe your story because it does not make sense of the world.

My friend, you are still misunderstanding God’s relationship to evil. Let us look at it from another angle. St. Augustine once explained that evil…

[To be continued…]

Responding to Ivan, pt. 2 (or Answering? the Logical Problem of Evil or I'm Not Plato, Anselm, or Stephen Colbert)

[This post is a part of a series. Previous posts are found here and here.]

Ivan Karamazov has posed a difficult question to answer. It is a variation of the argument of the problem of evil (which is the one and only argument against theism, there are many arguments for theism).

This might be kind of cheesy, or it might be a throwback to the philosophers of old, or perhaps it is a cheap imitation of Colbert’s “Formidable Opponent,” but I want to explore this through the means of a made-up conversation. The first conversation, I hope, will reveal what I see as the issue with nearly all of the Christian answers I have heard in response to the problem of evil. The main issue being that they fail to get to the heart of Ivan’s question.

The second conversation will, I hope, reveal the approach that I believe to be best… so here it goes:

"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that… one can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge you - answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

No, I wouldn’t consent. But you are distorting the story. God is bigger than we are, we simply cannot see the whole picture. The distance between my mind and His is greater than the distance between the mind of a flea and my mind. For He is infinite and I am finite. I am not sure why God would create a world in which even one baby must suffer and starve to death, but I am sure that He has a good reason. We don’t have to know the reason and we shouldn’t expect to be able to comprehend the reason.

How can you say that? Can you really believe that there is a good, all-powerful God who would cause even just one person to suffer for some sort of secret reason? What kind of “good” is that?

Well first-off I don’t think God “causes” evil.

Well is he not in control of all things?

He is, but He causes some things and allows others.

Call it what you like, but ultimately he must be responsible for everything whether you say “cause” or “allow.” He could choose to “not allow” but he does allow. If he is the only one that had a choice of whether or not to create a world in which evil would or could exist, then he is responsible. He could have made a world in which people only did good – a world in which there in no opportunity for evil.

But that would have eliminated free choice. He wants us to have free choice because He does not want a bunch of robots that do not have a choice to not love Him.

So, is the secret reason for why God allows suffering that he wants people to have free choice?

Yes, it could be. Don’t you see that the love of a robot is not as real as the love of a person? A person has the ability to love you or not love you, so that makes it all the more meaningful when a person chooses to love you. You cannot really love someone unless you have a choice. Freewill makes all the difference.

I have at least two problems with that. 1) It is inconsistent. Does God love himself? Does the Father love the Son? Does God love the world? Can He choose otherwise? Could God choose to hate Jesus and still be God? What sort of God could be both good and unloving? Can you really maintain that love is meaningful only if choice is present? If so, then human love is superior to divine love. Or else there is no God whose very nature is love. The argument that love must be freely chosen is not one that you should want to advocate. 2) Even if your position was not inconsistent with the rest of your Christian beliefs, I do not see how it is good or right for God to create a world in which a baby must suffer and die in order that he can feel more loved by people. Say I offer you a choice. You can choose to live your life in a house with robots that will have the semblance of loving you. Or, you could choose to live the rest of your life in a house with people that love you, but you must kill a little baby first. In what sense would it ever be right to choose the second option? To choose the second would be cruel, inhumane, unloving, and selfish. Yet, you tell me that God has done this on a much larger scale.

Well no, that is unfair. I am not sure that the reason God allowed evil and suffering is because of man’s freewill. Perhaps it was because He wanted to magnify His glory. Make His name great. If there was no rebellion there could be no Redeemer. If there was no suffering and pain there could be no Savior. We would never get to know God as such. And He is a beautiful Redeemer. Grace and mercy and love are the greatest of the divine attributes. We could not experience these things if there was not sin and suffering in the world.

But again, in what sense would it ever be right to choose these things at the expense of even one little baby?

Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is for none of those reasons that He created a world in which there would one day be evil. The real trouble here is that we are just so finite and cannot understand His ways. Really we don’t have to know. Consider your argument:

1) Any being who is good will prevent evil as best as possible

2) An omnipotent being can do anything

3) If God exists, he would be completely good and omnipotent

4) Evil exists

5) So, God does not exist

Sounds reasonable. But the problem disappears if you add just one phrase to the first premise so that it states that “any being who is good will prevent evil as best as possible unless there is a morally sufficient reason to do otherwise.”

We don’t have to know what the morally sufficient reason is. We just have to know that there is one. That one phrase, “morally sufficient reason,” takes care of the whole logical problem of evil. You can guess any number of things as to what the reason might be, but in the end you just have to know that there is, or at least could be, a morally sufficient reason. So there you have it.

I think that we are back to where we started. Tell me this: what reason could possibly be sufficient to make it alright to allow a little child to be starved and killed? Perhaps you are willing to say that it is alright because you have a distorted conscience. Perhaps you are mad. What sort of moral code allows for the death of an innocent so that some greater good might be accomplished? The idea that the end justifies the means has allowed for all sorts of atrocities throughout history and any decent man sees that such a stance is morally reprehensible. Your answer has done nothing to answer my question. It has simply shown that you hold your god to a low moral standard.

[To be continued…]

Marysue Crawley (or Cancer is Ugly, but Her Beauty Beat It)

The steady rain seemed appropriate.

It had taken me driving by her house three times before I could bring myself to park and go in. I knew it would not be easy to see her, but I wanted to speak to her one last time. I had to thank her and I hoped to encourage her. There have been many times in which the Lord has pointed to her faith to build me up in my own.

Kneeling by her bed I grabbed her hand and leaned in towards her. Not knowing if she could hear me, I spoke. After thanking her and sharing with her about the way He had used her in my life, I shared a few words that were meant to encourage her, but they were words that I knew I also needed to hear in that moment:

“He will not leave you alone.

He will not abandon you.

He will come for us.

Trust Him still.

Even in this dark hour may your faith in Him not waver.

He is by your side.

He is the one that has promised to make this right one day. He is the one that, even now, is making all things new.

I love you Marysue and I will see you again before too long.”

As I gave her hand a squeeze I got up off of my knees knowing that this would be the last time I would see this beautiful saint on this side of glory.

The tears came streaming down my face as the porch door closed behind me.

“Jesus wept.”


John Mark McMillan’s song “Death in His Grave”

Death In His Grave (Performance Video) from john mark mcmillan on Vimeo.

Help the Persecuted Church (or Help Sayed Mossa)

A lot of times it can be hard, as an American, to know what practical things we can do to help the persecuted church. Well, here's an opportunity.

You can read about it more on J.D. Greear's blog. The short of it is that an Afghan Christian by the name of Sayed Mossa has been imprisoned for his faith. He has been beat, sexually abused, and is facing execution. When this happened a few years ago with another man President Karzai stepped in and declared that Christians would be tolerated in Afghanistan.

Take just a few minutes and send a letter to President Obama to apply pressure to Karzai and hold him accountable to protect freedom. You can use this link to contact him.

You can write your Congressman too. Just don't do nothing.

Here is what I wrote, short and to the point (copy and paste if you want):

President Obama,

This is to add my voice to the support for Sayed Mossa. He is the Afghan Christian that has been imprisoned on account of his faith. Please apply pressure to President Karzai to have him give Sayed Mossa a fair trial. Please provide accountability to President Karzai to uphold freedom in Afghanistan.

Respectfully,

Lucas A. Newton

Responding to Ivan, pt. 1

In the comments of the last post I attempted to rephrase Ivan's argument to further clarify what he sees as the problem.

The idea of his argument focuses on this point: Christians say that God has a plan to work all of this out for a good that we cannot understand. But, if you had the power to create a universe and if you could make it under whatever conditions you wanted to, would you ever agree to make a world in which even one person (perhaps "that baby beating its breast") would have to suffer in order for a greater good to come about? If I would never agree to create a world in which even just one child had to be abused and killed in order to bring about a greater good, why should I believe that there is a God that would do that? Yet, Ivan charges, Christians reprehensibly proclaim a God that created a world in which many people would suffer.

I think it would be appropriate to take the time to respond to this argument. I think it is a charge against our God that carries a lot of weight with a great many people. Most people in the world have been affected by pain or suffering and nearly everyone has seen or heard about instances of gratuitous evil. Dostoevsky, through Ivan, takes the classic "problem of evil" argument and puts it in a form that accents the magnitude of suffering an evil. It appeals to man's compassion, sense of goodness, and understanding of justice.

Would you ever create a world in which even one baby would be raped and murdered? Would you ever allow for it? What sort of "greater good" could be accomplished through this world that could not be accomplished any other way? Or, in what way is this "greater good" so valuable that it is worth such atrocities against this infant? What sort of good is a good that can only be had through such a terrible evil?

If you find the idea of creating a world on these conditions so repulsive, how is it that you can accept that a God would create world in which this happens to many, many infants? And not only that, but there are countless other evils and atrocities that afflict the world of man.

Ivan asks a good question. A question that, once it is raised and heard, must be addressed in some way.

My answer, in the end, is simple. I think that to many it will seem insufficient. But over the next several posts I will attempt to show why there is no truer answer and why all other answers come up short unless they are connected to this one simple truth: we can believe this world to be what it is, and we can believe in the God of the Bible to be who He claims that He is, because Jesus was resurrected on the third day.

If the Ivans of this world accept this one statement all other things fall into place.

Rebellion

While my blog has not been altogether forgotten, it has suffered from a good amount of neglect. I am working on some posts, but in the meantime have another quote for you.

This one comes from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It is one of my all-time favorite books. It is one of those long Russian novels that few people will read. If you don't read it try to at least find the time to read the two chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor." They contain the best argument against Christianity I have ever read. Dostoevsky, a Christian, uses his character, Ivan, to share what Dostoevsky considered to be the irrefutable argument against Christianity.

I don't think I have heard anyone outright refute it.

Here's a taste...

After explaining his problem with the world Ivan explains to His brother, Alyosha, that he cannot accept the world on God's terms:

"That's rebellion," murmured Alyosha, looking down.

"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge you - answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

"And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would agree to accept their happiness on the fountain of the unexpiated blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy for ever?"

"No, I can't admit it Brother..."



[trans. by Constance Garnett]