BLESSEDNESS OF UNWORTHINESS

Christianity is pejoratively referred to as “Dirty Rotten Sinner Religion.” Christian friends have even called me negative for regarding myself in the light of this understanding.

However, this understanding is thoroughly Biblical. Although we have become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), our fleshly self remains unredeemed (Romans 8:10-11):

·       For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17)

Our flesh is so putrid that Paul had confessed:

·       For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. (Romans 7:18)

However, we don’t need the Bible to teach us these things. It should already be obvious. The late Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis, claimed that, although true, this understanding might be a tough-sell. However, this is an understanding that accompanies holiness:

·       I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. (The Problem of Pain)

Let’s just take one aspect of this “horror.” Lewis write:

·       God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.

As Lewis and Plato insist, I too must admit that my love is a selfish love. Yes, I love my wife, but this is because she is a great comfort to me. Admittedly, she is more loving that I, far more. However, she too must struggle with her fleshly impulses.

As a young Christian, I had a friend who admitted to his own fleshliness. Since, at that time, I couldn’t face my own, his disclosure made me feel uncomfortable. I even thought that there must be something terribly the matter with him.

Now I see otherwise. I am also freer than I ever had been. I don’t have to make excuses for my fleshly impulses, because I know that I am beloved and forgiven. I also know that my Savior can remove my humbling struggles in a moment, but, in love, He leaves me with them.

Besides, I no longer regard myself as a “great catch.” Instead, He has enabled me to see myself and to be eternally grateful that He saves the unworthy.

OUR DECEPTIVE DREAMS OF FULFILLMENT

Have we been the object of a cosmic joke? Perhaps! We have entertained many dreams of fulfillment, which have all left us unfulfilled. We’ve dreamed that if we could achieve enough success or social acceptance, we could accept ourselves. We’ve also dreamed that if we could obtain a certain wife or husband, the right job with a six figure income, our dream house or….we’d remain perfectly happy. However, our dreams have often been fulfilled but we are left without fulfillment.

The reputed wisest man on the earth, King Solomon, committed himself to solving this greatest of perplexities. In the course of his investigations, he had obtained all of his dreams – more success, esteem, riches, power, respect, peace, and women than anyone else. Yet he remained miserable with his life:

·       For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!  So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. (Ecclesiastes 2:16-21)

Solomon’s wisdom quest was unable to penetrate the veil to observe another life following death. Without this piece of the puzzle, he remained absorbed with the disappointments of this life. Consequently, his perplexity continued.

In contrast to Solomon’s conclusion, the late Oxford Professor, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), observed:

·       “All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.”

Lewis didn't expect the "glimpses" to fulfill." They were never supposed to! Although Solomon also had the “tantalizing glimpses,” he had hoped that they would suffice, and when they didn't, he was left in despair. However, mere glimpses or fragrant scents do not suffice by themselves; nor does a gourmet meal, at least, not for long. Consequently, this life is no more than a gourmet meal punctuated by long intervals. Instead, Lewis would have us regard such a meal as a foretaste of something ultimately fulfilling.

Lewis had also argued that since the mere objects of our desires are so abundantly supplied here, our desire for a permanent love, joy, and peace will also be fulfilled. We hunger, and there are foods to satisfy our hunger. We thirst, and water satisfies. We tire, and we have recourse to sleep, and we have other urges for which we find fulfillment, even if only briefly. Why then is it that this world only provides hints of what we long for?

Perhaps our hunger for love, joy, and peace will also find its ultimate and eternal fulfillment but in another life. Perhaps, then, there is a reason why this world will not fulfill us. It was never intended to fulfill. Instead, it was intended to simply offer us “tantalizing glimpses” of another world, which should become the object of our dreams. Undoubtedly, had we been fulfilled by what this world offers us, we wouldn’t seek further to find a loving Creator and Redeemer waiting for us.

We have a choice. We can live this life as if it really can offer us fulfillment, or we can use this vehicle of life to explore other possibilities.

THE LOVE AND GLORY OF GOD

We are not very interested in the glory of God. Instead, we are desperate to know and experience the love of God. This had been my story for many years as a Christian, who failed to see the connection between these two attributes of God.

Moses had sought the glory of God during a time of great disappointment. He had just spent 40 days with God on Mt. Sinai where he had received the Ten Commandments. Meanwhile, down below, Israel had made the Golden Calf and were partying. As a result, for the first time God’s anger broke out against Israel, and many died of a plague.

Consequently, Moses requested to see God’s glory. God’s answer was probably not what Moses had expected:

·       "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." But He said, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." (Exodus 33:19-20 NKJV)

Instead of a visual display of His glory with lightning and thunder, God disclosed Himself to Moses:

·       And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34:6-7)

Moses seemed satisfied with His self-disclosure and worshipped (Exodus 34:8). Instead of seeing God’s face – and the face best reveals the identity of the person – Moses was only permitted to see the backside of God. Nevertheless, the sight of God’s backside had satisfied Moses, and he worshipped God after seeing His self-disclosure. After all, Moses had earlier requested that he would be given a greater understanding of God:

·       “I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.” (Exodus 33:13)

God, therefore, revealed His “way” to Moses but not completely, not His “face,” the most revealing part of His Being. This was protected at the threat of death. (Nevertheless, God did reveal His “face” to His people but carefully and at the smallest increments.)

What would His face have revealed? Something that Israel was not ready to see. It was hidden away at the threat of death! Why death? Along with this hidden aspect of God, there was also an object concealed within the Holy of Holies that carried the threat of death to anyone who would look upon it.

It was obscured by the massive wings of two cherubim who were mounted above it. The Holy of Holies could be entered only once a year by only the High Priest on Yom Kippur. Even he was warned that if he looked upon this object, he would die. Therefore, when he was permitted to enter, he had to enter with great billows of smoke lest he would be struck dead by inadvertently seeing this object.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the Ark of the Covenant, its contents (including the Ten Commandments), or the Law, which brought death (Galatians 3:10-12; Matthew 5:21-22). Instead, the forbidden object covered the Ark and its contents – the “Mercy Seat,” also called the “Atonement Cover” (Romans 3:25), the thing that symbolized life and mercy (Leviticus 16:13) the great and carefully guarded mystery of our Savior!

How are we to understand this great mystery? I think that the account of Joseph hiding his identity from his brothers sheds light on this mystery. Joseph too had concealed himself from his brothers when they came to buy grain in Egypt during the famine. Perhaps 27 years had transpired since his brothers had sold Joseph as a slave into Egypt. However, because of the grace of God, the Pharaoh had made Joseph the administrator over all Egypt and their life-sustaining grain, which Joseph had carefully stored for the seven years of famine.

Attired as Joseph was, the brothers did not recognize him. Meanwhile, he made them jump through painful tests over the next years. Finally, when he was convinced that they had passed his tests by demonstrating that they had become men of character, Joseph broke down and could no longer conceal his true identity:

·       Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, "Make everyone go out from me!" So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard it. (Genesis 45:1-2)

Joseph had understood that he could only reveal Himself if such a revelation would benefit all of the parties. His brothers had to be ready to receive Joseph’s self-disclosure. Jesus’ mission had also been concealed. It was only at the end that He began to reveal it more fully:

·       But Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. (John 12:23-24; 13:31-32)

What glory had our Lord been hiding for millennium? That He loved us so much that He would die the most horrid and humiliating death to prove His love for us, even while we were still His enemies.

Why would He conceal the centerpiece of His glory? There are many reasons for this (1 Corinthians 2:7-8). It took me years to learn that ordinarily we cannot bear the truth. When I became a supervisor at the New York City Department of Probation, I had the naïve idea that if I revealed to my officers my good intentions for them, they would reciprocate. However, they took my kindness for weakness and acted-out. As a result, I had to bring disciplinary actions against two of them. Consequently, they hated me, and I hated them.

Subsequently, I learned (but very slowly) that I first had to teach my subordinates my sternness before they could possibly receive the revelation of my tenderness.

The Law had to precede God’s grace. God had to first convince Israel of His holiness and righteousness before they would ever be able to receive His all-surpassing love, a love that we still cannot fathom. Therefore, Paul prayed that Jesus’ people would know

·       …the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)

THE THEIST AND SCIENCE

Along with others, the German physicist Volker Braun has insisted that the theist cannot be open to the facts because he is already committed to his own beliefs:

·       A scientist is a man who changes his beliefs according to reality; a theist is a man who changes reality to match his beliefs.

However, we all approach the data with our own particular perspective or lens. Even the scientist sees the data through their own paradigms or lens. In his highly regarded, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn wrote:

·       Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

·       Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.

This was also true for me. My “traditional rules” had been torn apart by decades of depression and panic attacks. However, I had an ecstatic encounter with God while bleeding to death because of a chainsaw injury. As a result, I committed myself to seek the truth about God and pledged to examine all paths until I found it. This brought me to Jesus

A series of miraculous events had led me to Jesus’ door – the last place that this Jew had ever dreamed of going. However, skepticism forbade me from truly entering for a number of years. However, gradually I became convinced as a comprehensive and evidentially-based paradigm was taking form to become my lens and guiding paradigm.

There is nothing illegitimate about approaching the data with a paradigm or lens. Whenever I ride my bicycle, I wear my eyeglasses. Even though they are artificial and come between me and the data of pedestrians crossing the street and taxi doors swinging open in my path, my eyeglasses enable me to see and interpret the data more accurately. A sound worldview can do the same thing. I used to break up the world into “quality people” and “losers.” Although I wanted to belong to the first category, in my heart I knew I was a “loser.” Subsequently, the Bible helped me to understand that we are all losers who need a Redeemer. This shift in worldview helped me to better understand others and, consequently, to predict their actions.

The important question is not whether or not to set a pair of glasses or paradigm between ourselves and the data, but whether our lens allows us to see reality more accurately. Many Christians testify that the truth of the Bible and God working within them has given them the freedom (John 8:31-32) to truly understand their lives and those of others.

Biographer Jana Tull Steele reports of Duke Ellington:

·       He used to say that he had three educations: one from school, one at the pool hall, and one from the Bible. Without the latter, he said, you can’t understand what you learned from the other two places. (Duke Ellington)

Similarly, C.S. Lewis wrote:

·       I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun—not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

This is then the essential question: “Does the Biblical lens promote sight or blindness?” Does Christ enable us to do science or does this faith impede science? The historical testimony in favor of the Christian role in the development of science is overwhelming. British scientist Robert Clark summed it up this way:

·       However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did. And no wonder. For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science. In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods. (Christian Belief and Science, quoted by Henry F. Schaefer, 14)

The Christian paradigm is a light that illuminates the landscape. Consequently, I do not stumble as I once had.