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I am a born-again Christian, who is Reformed, but also charismatic, spiritually speaking. (I do not speak in tongues, but I believe glossalalia is a bona fide gift not given to all, and not as great as prophecy, for example.) I have several years of college education but only completed a two-year degree. I was raised Lutheran and confirmed, but I didn't "find Christ" until I was in the Army and responded to a Billy Graham crusade in 1973. I was mentored or discipled by the Navigators in the army and upon discharge joined several evangelical, Bible-teaching churches. I was baptized as an infant, but believe in believer baptism, of which I was a partaker after my conversion experience. I believe in the "5 Onlys" of the reformation: sola fide (faith alone); sola Scriptura (Scripture alone); soli Christo (Christ alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and soli Deo gloria (to God alone be the glory). I affirm TULIP as defended in the Reformation.. I affirm most of The Westminster Confession of Faith, especially pertaining to Providence.

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Removing God From Your Metric...

 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, "Man has forgotten God." What is meant is that the biggest issue today is whether man can live without God because He doesn't think He is necessary to answer the ultimate and big questions of life any longer, as Nietzsche said, "God is dead," or irrelevant and no longer needed!  Evolution seems to make atheists feel intellectually fulfilled and to be able to challenge the religious establishment and elites.  That's quite a commentary even on today's society and that was many years ago.  

Our technical expertise has surpassed our wisdom on how to best use it. We discover that inventions can be used for evil as well as good; the same thing Alfred Nobel wondered about dynamite. He felt so guilty that he founded the Nobel Peace Prize to compensate all the evil that could be done in his name.   We are rapidly seeing and overseeing our own destruction without any outside help and we can blame no one but ourselves. Will Durant said that "no society has been able to maintain morality without the aid of its religion!"  and George Bernard Shaw is said to have quipped, "No nation has survived the loss of its gods."  You must realize that it was the church that kept the Roman Empire becoming utter chaos and lawlessness. 

What can be done? Man needs to realize his identity in God which he has forgotten: he is in the image of God and hot-wired for dignity, purpose, meaning, fulfillment, self-worth, and self-esteem.  Without God, life makes no sense and if you do not reckon God in the dynamic, man becomes a useless enigma and purposeless lifeform, no better than the beast.  Have you ever observed an ape building a chapel? Of course not! They are oblivious to God because they are not in His image and not meant to worship Him. We have a heart to love God, a mind to know Him, and the will to obey Him; animals do not. 

How can we find our purpose or calling? William James said "the best use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.". We must live for something bigger than ourselves!"  We must not then just live for the here and now and eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die!  We are meant to live in light of eternity!  We have our identity in God! 

This image we have enables us to have the madness of laughter, the tears of joy and sorrow, the communicative ability to talk to God, the rational mind to reason, the morals to be responsible for our actions, the emotions and love to have a relationship with God on a personal level and find joy in God, the free will to decide if we want to serve God, and the intellect to know God. We have many things in common with God too besides that: we have a sense of humor, we are artistic and have an aesthetic sense, and we are musical and especially that we ae imaginative and creative and can think on an abstract level! This is why we are not stupid like the animals who cannot know God.

Bertrand Russell, atheist philosopher, said that "unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless."  We simply come from nothing but blue-green algae scum, we have no divine or ultimate purpose in living, we are headed nowhere after death and this means there is no justice because it is necessary according to philosopher Immanuel Kant that God be the Judge that He can make all things right that were wronged in this life.  Too many people get away with crime and evil and never see justice or their comeuppance and God is necessary to even the score and settle matters on Judgment Day.   In sum, consider the wise  words of Dostoevsky: "If there is no God, all things are permissible."   Soli Deo Gloria! 

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