For the Spiritually Sound

I designate in the title the audience I seek to reach. I don't mean to confuse those wavering or those struggling with disbelief, but to those who know God is God, and God is good.

I was reading Philip Yancey, as I am prone to do, and I came across some spiritually devastating thoughts. He was essaying the book of Job. He wrote:

The contest posed between Satan and God is no trivial exercise. Satan's accusation that Job loves God only because "you have put a hedge around him," stands as an attack on God's character. It implies that God is not worthy of love in himself, that people follow God only because they get something out of it or are "bribed" to do so. In Satan's view, God resembles a politician who can win only by rigging the election...'People love God,' said one priest, 'the way a peasant loves his cow, for the butter and cheese it produces.' Job's response after all the props of faith have been removed, will prove or disprove Satan's challenge. A weathly man, Job has much to lose if God stops blessing him. Will he continue to trust God even after he forfeits it all?

All Job stood to lose was wealth, health, and his family. Sounds like pretty high stakes, but Yancey, as he is prone to do, takes it a step further with famous behaviorist Edward O. Wilson's words on Mother Teresa and altruism:

[Wilson] explains [Teresa's] good deeds by pointing out she was secure in the service of Christ and in her belief in immortaility; in other words, believing she wouled get her reward she acted on that "selfish" basis...We have faith in God in hopes that we will get something out of it.

I've always connected people's affinity for God with their desire for earthly peace and pleasure but never have I traced that affinity to infinity. To immortality. To eternity.

So here I am grappling with my true love for God. Wow. I mean William Safire said that "The Book of Job delights the irreverent, satisfies the blasphemous, and offers at least some comfort to the heretical," but I never knew it would do just the opposite to the believer. I was left awkwardly holding the oh so breakable question:

Would I still love God if I went to Hell after death?

I've been wondering in the past few minutes why we are even told about Heaven and Hell. Why don't we put love to the real test and not let reward and punishment get in the way. Here I am like Job questioning God. His ways are obviously higher than mine. I do think, however, that Jesus Christ would have a much smaller fanbase. All the lukewarm Christians might drop off. That might be a blessing...unless I found myself to be one of them.

Without the promise of Heaven, however, our concept of the character of God would be much different. I'm not trying to go down that theological road. I want simply to think about what love is. Why do I love God?

I can't of course tell you exactly what my initial reasoning was in deciding to follow God (as I described in the previous post, Born) but I can tell you that most of what kept me on the alleged "straight and narrow" through my early childhood was fear of Hell. As I grew older I began have these high ideals of being thankful for "who God is" but if you put me to the wire and across from the skyscraper on which I stand there is another where God stands, yet there is nothing to catch me should I slip headlong into an eternal damnation then chances are I'm not taking a chance.

But all this is implying that, as Yancey says Satan's real challenge was, "that God is not worthy of love in himself." And something in my grain tells me that can't be true. I cannot make myself agree to the notion that God is not worthy of love. And this gives me hope of my own love for Him.

In my spirit, all of it really boiled down to the fact that I don't know God well enough. If in my present relationship with God I were to find there was no escape from Hell then I may abandon the whole gig and engulf myself in earthly pleasures. But I believe with all my heart that if I truly became accquainted with God then nothing could deter me from Him. I could never find Him undeserving of my full and devoted love. The prospect of Hell would make me afraid to my core and I would plead with God Almighty for escape, but if none was offered, I would love Him still. If I truly knew Him I would know Him to be good, all good and the source thereof. He is worthy of love simply for who He is.

The truth is, fortunately, that there is escape from Hell and God provides it through His son Jesus Christ. This is a gift we should never take for granted. We can't. The Kingdom is Heaven is why we are still locked in the great big tank of an earth. We have to work for it and fight for it and die for it. But lest we forget who the King is, we had all better, as Leonard Ravenhill would say, "...get sackcloth and ashes and humble ourselves and say 'Almighty God.'" We have to know Him to love Him.

Storm

House is gone.
Everyone's okay.
Please pray.
[first text message]

This text message sent me swarming back to the hour prior to. Perhaps it sent me back as a forcible sort of selective memory. Temporarily ignoring the present. This hour I went back to held a much different scene than my present paint-peeled basement walls, cement floors, and titanic storm systems. In this earlier hour I was texting a dear young lady named Abigail Hope Ogle who was sitting in the mounting wind of an impending weather hazard with a puppy in her lap staring over the land and the pond and remarking on nature's worship and ode to the power of the one God. She was full of joy and singing to the "exploding spring" that she loved. I could see it all in my head. You just have to know Abi. She has a precious and rare heart and it shows. She is an appreciateur and an artist. She talks of Yahweh like He’s the reason she’s alive. She talks of trees and flowers and paintings and the ocean and even storms like they were all made to worship Him. She carries kindness around like it’s the latest fashion.

The girl is good.

In the past few days she had told me of her home and family until I came to know them and have a deep appreciation for them. The house, only recently completed, was referred to fondly as the "Forever" House.

Forever.

An F5 tornado is no friend to the human endeavor. On April 27, 2011 one steam trained through Alabama taking out entire cities. In minutes their “forever” was over. They were sitting down for dinner in the basement when the doors slammed in, the stairway collapsed, glass exploded everywhere and the wall caved in. Her grandmother shielded two other members of the family against the glass, sustaining injuries herself. Their cue for exit had arrived. The rain was tearing down from the sky in sheets like it was being wrung out and the wind was adding to the noise. All were terrified, shocked, and afraid, but soon regained an air of calmness. They entered a room that was still intact until help would arrive and they sang songs. Yes, they sang. What peace is this?

Everything’s gone.
God has a plan
Jeremiah 29:11-13
[second text message]

In observing this warfare between a small patch of humanity and the weakly named "natural disasters" I have to wonder at the unobserved. What was going on in the great cosmic conflict and conversation when trees and lives were being uprooted. Did it hold any kinship with the Jobian tale?

...there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

So far the description fits. Now for the supernatural symposium going on in the invisible world:

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him: he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

That sounds about right. I can see God bragging on this person. Saying, “Hey Satan, I bet Abigail really gets under your skin. Have you noticed how blameless she is? She loves me. How do you like that?” And then smug Satan of course is so sure that if you pulled the rug out from under her she would fall…but it didn’t happen.

She didn’t curse His face at all. In fact she was full of praise for Him and thanks for her family. The next morning she sent me a verse from the Bible as she has been in the habit of doing. She asked me how I was. I was joyfully indignant. Your house is gone! Let me worry about you! It just didn’t happen. After school: same thing. All the colons and parenthesis smiling at me and of all the pure audacious goodness, she asked about how school was, that is after a day for sifting through the wreckage of what once was her shelter which she insists was “somewhat enjoyable.” She was sure to tell me that God has a better plan and she has an amazing peace and to thank me for my prayers. She was also excited to find that her kitten and puppy were found alive.

Everything’s great!
God is so good.
It’s a beautiful day.
[text message from the day after]

All this less than twenty-four hours after everything was taken from her.

As the sick, sour feeling was still lacing my normally dormant emotions I was shooting pool with my friend Daniel. He said a really true thing. He told me it was all going to be alright and that this was just going to be a testimony to the greatness of God before long. I suppose that’s what most tragedies are.

Potential Testimonies.

Christians, like our heroine here, keep showing Satan that there are many willing to stand up and say “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.” There are still those worthy of God’s boasting and consideration. Hundreds of people were killed or lost loved ones to this horrendous storm. This is just one story. The fact is, there are still people praising Him in their storms both literal and figurative. And I thank God for them.

Opinions: This one goes out to all the Sarah Baldwin's in the world

The facebook world has long been a launchpad of mediocre, inane, and dramatic discussion and debate. It never fails. I was perusing the never-ending wall of my some six-hundred friends' status updates when I espied a note from a very bright young lady. The note was entitled "25 Seconds in the Mind of Sarah Baldwin." Well! Now there was an attractive title. In my country we pay a penny per thought and we pay it cash money on the spot, so an entire twenty-five seconds in the mind of such a wit as Sarah Baldwin was gold.

*click*

Okay, so I'm in. It is actually a compilation of twenty-five things all of which take more than a second to read. Here I was feeling I was getting a good deal when my eyes sucked in random fact number five. My eyes funneled it straight to my mental harddrive where I turned it into a legible thought. It read:

"It really bothers me that most people seem not to understand the difference between FACT and OPINION, yes there is a difference, a BIG one."

Well, hey that bothers me too. If I say hey, black is a classy colour and they insist it is not, then this person has a poor understanding in the difference between fact and opinion. I didn't think this was exactly what she was talking about but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and left what should have been a warning comment:

"This is interesting. I'll talk to you about fact and opinion one day."

The next day at school, predominantly in the lunchline, my hunch was confirmed. She herself had a skewed conception of the difference between fact and opinion. I put on a bit of a guise as a raving liberal to combat her own stark conservatism. The plan worked. Operating under the impression that I might be a supporter I made the statement that the rightness of abortion (a touchy subject not to be made light of) was not an opinion but a fact. She, as I hoped she would, disagreed and said because "we don't know" whether it is right or wrong that it must be an opinion. This is where the clincher came in:

"Do you believe in absolute truth"

After several defining sessions she finally said she did. Now, when it comes to making moral decisions there is no such thing as opinion, that is because somewhere in the cosmos of conscience and the high law that governs righteousness there exists a truth that is in everlasting practise regardless of what we think that truth is. The debate went on. I showed Sarah Baldwin a thumbtack and asked her if it was indeed a thumbtack. She agreed that it was. I asked her in so many words what she would think if someone told her it was not a thumbtack. She said that would be a lie. That's the point I was trying to make. They couldn't be "of the opinion" that it was a rhinocerous. No matter what they think it IS a thumbtack. And that is getting pretty worldly but the idea stays.

Well now here we are, all a bunch of Pontius Pilates begging the question, "What is truth?" Well I cannot answer that. It is true we don't always know the truth. We can decide whatever we believe to be true. But the FACT is, the truth is the truth no matter our OPINION.

And that's a fact Jack.

(Or Jackie as the gender may be. You know who you are, you ALMOST wrecked my argument...almost).