Hey guys, I haven’t posted for a while, but I came across a cool list of questions that could be fun to discuss.

What is Your Worldview?

1. The government has a moral obligation to help the poorest and neediest members of our society.
2. Education is a fundamental (unalienable) civil right of every individual.
3. It is immoral for bank presidents to be making millions of dollars while the country as a whole suffers because of bad banking practices.
4. In every business transaction, somebody gains, and somebody loses.
5. If a country with less than 5% of the world’s population uses 25% of the world’s resources, steps should be taken to reduce that country’s consumption.
6. Criminals who commit crimes because of trauma or abuse in their childhood should be given special consideration in the application of penalties.
7. Among the nations, malnutrition, crime, poverty and other social ills are caused in part by the world’s burgeoning overpopulation.
8. The economy should be a free market, but the government may sometimes need to make sure that the prices of needed goods are fair.
9. The world is basically getting more evil and corrupt, and will continue to do so until Jesus comes.
10. Unless the government intervenes, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
11. We should vote for Christian leaders so that when they are in power, they can get prayer and the Bible-reading back into public schools.
12. The Gospel should address poverty and injustice by altering the social systems that cause these ills.
13. The most Christian form of government would be one in which everyone shared equally with everyone else.
14. The Founding Fathers were mostly deists and agnostics who recognized the need to have separation of church and state.
15. Our government should make sure that every citizen receives the basic necessities for living.
16. Some subjects in school, such as science and math, are basically religiously “neutral”, that is, they do not have religious content or a Biblical purpose.
17. History is the record of conflict between the rich and powerful against the poor and oppressed.

0 = strongly disagree

1 = disagree somewhat

2 = agree somewhat

3 = strongly agree

There has never been an intelligent reason to sin. God created people. He knows best how a person is supposed to operate. These descriptions of how people should operate are called moral absolutes. They apply to everyone. They never change. When we choose to live differently we make a stupid choice. We make a completely unintelligent and unloving decision. We decide that we are in charge and God is not.  In other words, we sin.

There is no conceivable reason why man should have rebelled against God.

God ran a great risk when He made mankind because He made them capable of relationship. For relationship to be possible they had to have personality functions (a mind, a will and emotions). They had to be able to reject relationship or there would never be real relationship. This was the risk. It was possible that they would reject God. Not likely nor intelligent but possible. Adam and Eve had a perfect world and a perfect life. They had intimate friendship with God. God was happy that He had created them. He said they were good. I don’t think God was lying. I think He really thought they were good. It was amazing. Then they ruined it. They decided that they would be the king of their hearts and simultaneously made the stupidest decision in the history of the universe.

God is perfectly reasonable in all His requirements. He only lays out design requirements like that of a car which needs oil. He won’t ask us to do even one thing that we can’t do or shouldn’t do. He made us able to obey, which means we are also able to disobey. This is reasonable.

And so, people are without excuse. Rom 1:18-21 ESV  “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  (19)  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  (20)  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  (21)  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

We need to understand what we have done. We need to understand our part in the revolt. Adam and Eve revolted against God. And every one of us have done the same thing at some point in our lives. I remember very clearly what I think was the first time I sinned. I was probably 3 years old and I was mad at someone close to me. I knew what was right and what was wrong. I could have walked away. Instead I chose to hurt her. It is such a sickening and disgusting memory. But it is exactly what happened every time I sinned in my life. I made a wicked and stupid decision. I rebelled against God’s loving and intelligent descriptions of how things are supposed to be every single time.

1Jn 3:4 ESV  “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness.  It is a refusal to live according to the truth that God has given us. It is refusing to live according to self-discipline and what we know to be right.”

I’ve heard it said that men are not sinners because they sin, but they sin because they are sinners. Think about this for a moment. What does this lead us to? It makes us say, “Well, we have to sin because we’re sinners.” And so what do we do? We sin. Of course we do. We have to, right? We are caused to sin. But is this true? Are we caused to sin or do we rebel against God and His intelligent, loving commands? Is He right to tell us not to sin? Is He right to hold us responsible for our sin? I think so!

We establish and build our character on continuous choices.  It’s always easier to keep on doing what we’ve been doing.  The more we choose to sin the easier it is to sin. It’s hard to steal for the first time. Your skin gets hot, your heart pounds in your chest, perhaps you break out into a sweat, perhaps you are shaking from the nervous excitement.  You have to fight your conscience and try to explain away your guilt, but it gets easier every time. The next time you steal it’s easy because you’ve already worked things through in your mind. The physical symptoms of guilt one by one fade away until you are not longer affected. You feel a little less guilty. The same goes for good choices. The longer we learn to live with Jesus, the easier it gets.

I want to leave you with just a couple verses to think about. Whether you are a Christian or not, you are a person who was designed to live a certain way. When you choose to rebel against any of God’s moral absolutes you reject the most loving and intelligent Being in the universe and in doing so make the dumbest decision you have ever made.

1Jn 3:6 ESV  “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

Mat 7:15-20 ESV  “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  (16)  You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?  (17)  So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  (18)  A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  (19)  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  (20)  Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Text of Address by

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises,

Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today’s graduates.

Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said…

A World Split Apart

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The split in today’s world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom — in this case, our Earth — divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as compact units. For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its autonomous character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in communist captivity. It may be that in the past years Japan has increasingly become a distant part of the West, I am no judge here; but as to Israel, for instance, it seems to me that it stands apart from the Western world in that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success, there were no geographic frontiers to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious, and this in turn points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

Convergence

But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different.

Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world’s rifts I would have concentrated on the East’s calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West in our days, such as I see them.

A Decline in Courage [. . .]

may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western States were created, the following principle was proclaimed: governments are meant to serve man, and man lives to be free to pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration). Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the morally inferior sense which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one’s nation must be defended in a distant country?

Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has given itself the organization best suited to its purposes, based, I would say, on the letter of the law. The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law, even though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert. Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.

I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

The Direction of Freedom

In today’s Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps which are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework).

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people’s minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few trends of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a review, to look into the influence of these Western characteristics on important aspects on [the] nation’s life, such as elementary education, advanced education in [?...]

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich’s book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

Not a Model

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Shortsightedness

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan’s advice to his own country — to begin unilateral disarmament — belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Moscow Old Square [1] officials laugh at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation’s courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

I have had occasion already to say that in the 20th century democracy has not won any major war without help and protection from a powerful continental ally whose philosophy and ideology it did not question. In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning that war with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy grew and cultivated another enemy who would prove worse and more powerful yet, as Hitler never had so many resources and so many people, nor did he offer any attractive ideas, or have such a large number of supporters in the West — a potential fifth column — as the Soviet Union. At present, some Western voices already have spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our days.

Loss of Willpower

And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

Humanism and Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say in 1844 that “communism is naturalized humanism.”

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism). Not by coincidence all of communism’s meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today’s West and today’s East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism’s crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before the Turn

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

If you are older than 15 you probably remember watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Indiana was trying to find the Holy Grail before the Nazis could use it to conquer the world. Of course that wasn’t enough suspense. He also had only a few minutes before his father died. To accomplish all of this he had to go through a couple of almost impossible tests with only the help of a journal. At one point he came to the end of a cliff and had to find a way to cross a sickeningly huge gap. Remembering the words written in his father’s journal he decided he had to make a “Leap of Faith“. So he did it! He leapt out into nothing, landed on a bridge and defeated the Nazis once again.

This is a very emotional and powerful moment and gives tingles to almost anyone watching. It is also the complete opposite of faith. Faith is not a leap. It is not mystical. It is not a spell or magic, and it is not a formula.

So what is faith? I think it can be summed up as an unshakable confidence in the character of God. It is something quite reasonable.

Romans 10:13 for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.” 14 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? 15 How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!” 16 However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?” 17 So faith {comes} from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

If faith comes from hearing, then why is it that so many people hear the Gospel and don’t believe? It would be so simple to evangelize and disciple the world. We would only need the internet and some big speakers. But this isn’t so. There are a couple of different kinds of “hearing.” The first would be hearing the notes and sounds someone makes. It’s like the game “Telephone.” One person says a random phrase like, “the duck flies at midnight.” Then it passes through several people, and the last person relays the message as, “the black flies are in flight.” What happened was each person heard sounds but never understood the message. Confusion is very fun but not effective. The second kind of hearing could really be called “understanding.” It’s the kind where someone says, “I hear ya, man.” What he means is that he understood what the person was saying.

This is what I think this verse means. So faith comes by hearing and the hearing comes by the word of God. Let’s change out the words. Faith comes through understanding-hearing and understanding-hearing by the word of God. Our faith should come about when we are presented with the truth of God, and we really get it. So faith is a reasonable thing, but how should it look? Is faith when we just really believe something is going to happen? I don’t think it is. That is part of it, but it should be a result of our faith and not the core of it.

Abraham showed what his faith was in. His name was originally Abram which meant “exalted father.” The problem was that he was very old and not a father. He had to go around being constantly reminded that he had no children. Hello, my name is Exalted Father, and I’m not a father. I imagine this would be painful. Then God came along and told him he was going to have children. Fast forward several years, and he sees this happen. The promise was fulfilled with the miraculous birth of his son Isaac.

Genesis 22:1 “After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’” God told Abraham to take the very thing He promised him (the product of his faith) and sacrifice him. If Abraham’s faith was only believing really hard that he would have a son, he would have crumpled at this point, but he didn’t. He meant to follow through with this. Genesis 22:11-12 “But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ (12) He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’”

Abraham’s life was not caught up in Isaac but in God. His confidence was not that he would have a son. His confidence was in God. Abraham knew God. They had an interactive relationship. James 2:23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”–and he was called a friend of God.

Daniel 3:12-17 “There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (13) Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. (14) Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? (15) Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” (16) Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. (17) If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.”

If we let this story stop here, we would all still be very impressed. Those guys had faith just like Indiana Jones! But that is not the whole of their faith. The story continues.

Daniel 3:18-20 “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (19) Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. (20) And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

Let this be a call to faith for you, but not the mystical wimpy stuff. Don’t let faith stop at a formula or really strong hope in something impossible. Exercise the FAITH THAT WORKS, the reasonable faith. The faith based on understanding the truths of the Bible and the stories of our incredible God. Develop an unshakable confidence in the character of God!

I don’t need to follow all of those rules. I can do whatever I want. I’m under grace not the law! Quit being so legalistic. After all, Jesus rejected the law. Right?

Gal 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Now, I know that not many Christians would go this far, but how many people are thinking like this? I know there was a time that I would have thought something close to this. How many people are continuing to sin because they have the idea that we are “free from the law”? The idea of not being under law is appealing to people. They can pursue their goals and secure their own pleasure all while feeling justified because they are justified by faith and not by works of the law. I think that this thinking is a problem and a problem that is very fixable. Did Paul and Jesus reject all forms of law? Were they ever suggesting that we should stop following moral law?

The word Paul uses in Galatians for “law” is the Greek word “nomoV”. This is also the word used for “law” all throughout the New Testament. I must clarify here that I am not one to seek out mystical surprise definitions of Greek words to produce a fluffy and witty sermon. There are, however, occasions in translation where English equivalents fail to communicate clearly. I think that this may be one. We don’t need to replace the word “law” in our Bibles with another word, we just need to look at the verses using it with new glasses.

It seems to me that the when the writers of the New Testament talk about the law they are not talking about the laws we are accustomed to today. They are not talking about moral law (the internal, right and wrong kind of law). They are talking about the Law the way their Jewish audiences would have understood it. That is the Torah. The Pentateuch. The Law of Moses. Mark, who wrote his Gospel to Gentiles, never even used the word “law” (nomoV) because the word was a Greek equivalent to a Jewish idea and was not relevant to Gentiles. “Law” equals “Torah” all throughout the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles.

Mat 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Jesus said, “I have not come to abolish the Torah.” The Torah is NEVER referred to negatively in the Bible. It was beautiful and from God. God liked the Torah. He gave it to the people “for their good.” Grace is better, but law is not bad.

The Torah had three parts: Ceremonial law, Civil law, and Moral law. The Ceremonial law is found from Exodus 25 to the end of Leviticus. It included the sacrificial system, the tabernacle system, and the cleanness (physically) system. The Civil law is found in Deuteronomy 6 through 26. It included such things as consequences for stealing and murder, political and criminal laws, property rights and distribution of land. The Moral law is recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 in the form of the Ten Commandments. These laws are special. They are founded in the Character of God and in reality. They are the basic right and wrong understanding that everyone has. They are the eternal law of God. These three parts of the Torah make up one Torah, but are they all of the same importance?

Leviticus 14 commands that a person tithe a yield of their seed year by year. 1500 years later Jesus spoke about this to a group of Pharisees. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” – Matthew 23:23. I ask again, are all the parts of the Torah of the same importance? Jesus seemed to suggest otherwise. He declared the moral law as the part of the law that they should have focused on.

And it is this set of laws that the Christian in my first paragraph is wanting to be out from under. Yet it is the one set of laws that no one can ever declare they are not subject to.

Romans 1:20-32 talks about moral law. It appears to be talking about people as a whole and says that people are without excuse. People know right from wrong. And “law” (nomoV) is not written once in this passage. Moral law has been established since creation and is not exclusive to the Torah. Without the Torah people still know right from wrong. Without the Torah people are still held accountable to moral law.

So what can I say to the guy who says, “don’t hold me to your moral standards. I’m under grace not the law”? In a humble, loving and peace-seeking way I can tell him that he is right. He is no longer required to fulfill the Torah’s civil and ceremonial laws. He is now under grace through faith in Jesus and now must only obey the moral law. He must simply love God and his neighbor as himself.

Recently, a friend and coworker of mine was planning a retreat for our staff. She approached me and asked if I would be willing to share during a devotional time. I, of course, was quick to say, “yes.” I began to get excited about a chance to teach or preach, but she kept talking. My excitement faded as she said, “it’s on the glory of God.”

Now, why would a missionary like myself become less excited when asked to speak specifically on the glory of God? The answer is that I’ve spent a lot of time in churches, shopping in Christian bookstores, reading Christian books, watching Christian TV, and listening to Christian radio. All of those things have helped me to become what I am today, and I am so grateful for them. However, they have also at times bored me to tears with vague and unexciting references to and explanations of incredible Biblical truths and concepts. The result is that some Christian phrases have lost their meaning to me. Ideas that should excite me do quite the opposite.

The happy part of this story is that I did not say, “never mind.” I decided to give it a shot. She gave me the verse I was supposed to focus on, and I went to study the glory of God.

King David in Psalm 26 verse 8 said, “O LORD, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.” I did some studying to see that there were several words within the range of meanings for glory. They usually meant something like honor or splendor. But after this studying I looked back at Psalm 26:8, and it clicked. David was not being vague or mystical. He said to God that he loved His house and where His glory dwells. He loved to be in the presence of God. For David, the place where God’s glory dwells (His presence) was the tabernacle, a physical place where he could go to be in the presence of God. It is very much like what the psalmist said in Psalm 84. “How lovely are Your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord…How blessed are those who dwell in Your house…For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

This was a very simple and clear declaration of worship. God, it is really good to be in Your presence. It is better than not being in it. Of course it is more wonderful to be with God. I agree with the psalmist. I would choose one day with Him than three years anywhere else. I’d rather stand uncomfortably close to Him than to rest comfortably anywhere else.

Today we don’t have the tabernacle. So, where can I go to be in God’s presence? Where can I call the place where His glory dwells? I think the answer can be here sitting on my couch. I set out to remember times that I had been in the presence of God: a church where everyone was dancing and worshiping loudly, a Catholic mass in Florida, a Congregational church in New Hampshire, a plane over the Pacific ocean, my car as I left work, a bathroom in a McDonald’s in South Carolina. Then it hit me, and I said, “O LORD, I love the bathroom in McDonald’s in South Carolina, the place where Your glory dwells! I love to be in those churches, the place where Your glory dwells. I love to sit on this couch, the place where Your glory dwells!”

Where can we call the place where His glory dwells? The answer is anywhere that we are. So, what brings the change? I don’t think that God is constantly manifesting His presence to everyone who walks into that bathroom in South Carolina. I think we all believe that God is present everywhere in some fashion, but those who have experienced God’s presence will tell you that there are times that things are different. Sometimes God shows up, and it is very clear. It is almost as though the air gets thicker, and He will often speak to us in those times or bring greater understanding of His character and love for us.

A change occurs, but what brings the change? I think it is simple. God shows up when He is invited. Regardless of our theology on how it all happens, whether or not God planned our invitations or only knew they would come, the simple truth is that He manifests His presence when we invite Him.

I read some verses that mention this order. James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you…” In Jeremiah 29:12-14 God says to the people of Judah, “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find {Me} when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you…”

When does God become near to us? When do we find Him? It’s when we draw near to Him – when we seek Him and search for Him with all our heart! And so, my challenge or encouragement to you who have read this far is to invite God to be near to you. Invite God into your life. Make a blanket sweep invitation like the prophets in the Old Testament. Make sure that God knows that you want Him near. Tell Him He can show up and take over ANY time He wants. He can speak ANY time. He can interrupt you at ANY time. Now, I don’t give blanket sweep invitations like this to anyone. But God can be trusted. He has shown Himself to be upright, loving and wise.

This time they are not David’s words. They are mine. God, I love the habitation of Your house and the place where Your glory dwells! A day with You is better than a thousand anywhere else! Make these words yours.

When people are separated in relationship it is usually two-way. There was hurt from one side or both. Pride from one side or both. Neglect from one side or both. Both people have distanced themselves. Eventually each side decides to stay separated. At least this seems to be the pattern. I’ll give that there are other possible scenarios. At any rate, it is never this way with God. God is always trying to close the gap. He’s always ready for reconciliation.

Does this matter? Of course! Salvation, and our very religion of Christianity is a relationship. Matthew 22:35-40 says, “One of them, a lawyer, asked Him {a question,} testing Him, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And He said to him, ‘”YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.” This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.’” There is also John 17:3 which I previously wrote an article on “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

If we throw out relationship with God we throw out salvation, purpose and Christianity. It is not just for the holy ones or the extra devoted ones. It’s all there is. Christianity is not just a belief. Christianity is simple, but it is more than a belief or an ability to say yes to something.

So what happens when people are separated from God? Who causes the separation? Historically it was the people. Adam and Eve were the first. They did it. God did not. They sinned and rejected God. God did not all of a sudden decide to distance Himself from them. The people at Noah’s time did it. God did not. It grieved God. “The LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.’” (Genesis 6:7) The word “sorry” here is an out of breath grieving. That is not the action of a distant being or one who has given up on people. The relationship hurt. It’s the kind of grief we experience when relationships are torn apart – be it death or simply separations like divorce or fights.

The people of Israel did it. It was NOT God rejecting Israel. They rejected God and caused their separation. “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 31:31-32) God used the imagery of a marriage relationship to show His connection with Israel and to describe fully what it was like when they separated from Him – when they rejected Him.

“Now I will sing to my Beloved a song of my Beloved concerning His vineyard: My Beloved has a vineyard in a fruitful horn. And He dug it, and cleared it of stones, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in its midst, and also hewed out a wine vat in it. And He waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced rotten grapes. And now, O people of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I ask you, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Who knows? I waited for it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes. And now I will make known to you what I will do then to My vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be burned. I will breach its wall, and it will become a trampling ground. And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor hoed; but briers and thorns shall come up. And I will command the clouds from raining rain on it. For the vineyard of Jehovah of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah is His delightful plant. And He waited for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!” (Isaiah 5:1-7)

God said, “What more could be done to My vineyard that I have not done in it?” He expected good grapes because He had done everything He could to make that happen. He did His part and the people rejected Him.

So why? Why do people reject God? Why do they separate themselves from Him? Why did I when I was younger?

I think the first answer is stupidity. The next obvious thing is sin or selfishness. And finally I think it is a misunderstanding of God’s character. I am sure we could come up with several other reasons, but I want to focus on the fear and anger that results from misunderstanding God’s ways and actions.

“My voice rises to God, and I will cry aloud; My voice rises to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; in the night my hand was stretched out without weariness; My soul refused to be comforted. When I remember God, then I am disturbed; when I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. You have held my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I have considered the days of old, the years of long ago. I will remember my song in the night; I will meditate with my heart, and my spirit ponders: Will the Lord reject forever? And will He never be favorable again? Has His loving kindness ceased forever? Has His promise come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious, or has He in anger withdrawn His compassion?” (Psalms 77:1-9)

I think this is often what causes people to be distant from God. They assess their situation. Horrible things have happened. People have died. Houses have burned. Cities have been flooded. Children rebelled against their parents and God. Diseases. Cancer. War. They ask why did it happen? But that is not where it ends. Nor is it the most important question. It does not get to the heart of things. I can talk “why” for hours with people. I can give smart answers as to how things work. I can even give some catchy answers and even some cliches. It will do close to nothing. People want a place to put the blame. They ask a lot of questions – all legitimate, some important:

God, why did you let this happen? God, where were you? Why me? God, did you do this?

Intelligent problems are not what separate relationships. My understanding of time or God’s omnipotence does not separate me from Him any more than the concepts of math or science do. The issue is relationship. I cannot be close to someone that I hate. I cannot be close to someone who I think is a murderer or a liar or an emotionless jerk.

The real question is not one we ask:

God, what are you like? Are you a God who does evil? Just like the psalmist said, “Have you forgotten to be gracious?”

We assume an answer and our actions and lives follow. We don’t care why it happened. What we say is that God caused it. If we assume He brought the evil upon us then we cannot logically maintain a love relationship with Him. Intelligence and survival says stay away from the things that hurt us.

God, is your character evil? God, do you kill? God, are you selfish? THESE ARE REAL QUESTIONS. They sound horrible, but if we want to really know the answer we can ask God. “Righteous are You, O LORD, that I would plead {my} case with You; Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? {Why} are all those who deal in treachery at ease?” (Jeremiah 12:1) God even invites us to reason with Him. “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.’” (Isaiah 1:18)

God is righteous. We can discuss matters of justice with Him. We can ask the hard questions of God. He does not reject us for asking. He does not ever answer, “because I said so” like we are used to hearing from people in authority over us. A close friend of mine knew a woman whose child had died. She was afraid to ask God why it happened because she thought He would take her other children away. It was because people had told her not to question God. But God is not like that. He answers our hard questions.

God, are you the reason my child is lost? Are you the reason my friend died so young? God, did you bring the famine in Africa? Ask these questions, but be willing to hear the answer. God’s answer will never be, “I can do what I want to. If I did it, it’s right.”

What makes God righteous? What makes God’s actions right? God’s actions are not right because He is God. His actions are right, because they are right. He is righteous, because He does what is right.

Ask Him the questions. He has done no wrong. He did not do evil. Don’t shove those questions under the rug because you are afraid of questioning Him. Discuss matters of justice with Him. He has done justly. In Genesis 18:25 Abraham asked, “Will not the judge of the earth do right?” The answer is yes! A big YES!!! God will deal justly. He deserves His role as judge because He deals justly. He has done no wrong. So think about those things that have driven you crazy for years. Think about the pain and the wrongs that have happened to you. Don’t just let yourself be distanced from God. He was not the one who did wrong.

Are you separated from God? It is not His fault. He has not wronged you. Deal with it. Deal with it quickly. Ask Him the hard questions. Come back to Him. James 4:8 “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” Do not let your misunderstandings separate you from God. Ask the hard questions. I guarantee that it was not His fault. Take the questions to God. Discuss matters of justice with Him. He will answer. He did not do evil.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.” (Matthew 23:37)

This is God’s heart for people. He so longs to draw us close to Him.

The more I study God and the Bible the more I become convinced that it is all about relationship. Everything is about relationship. Each of the ten commandments were details on how to properly relate to either God or man. Eternal life according to John 17:3 is relationship with God. Jesus summed up the Old Testament by saying, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Properly relate to God and properly relate to people. Relationship with God and relationship with people is all that matters. I would suggest that it is our purpose in life and the reason we were created, but that is another article. I want to focus on relationship with God and specifically hearing from Him.

Any relationship must be two-sided. I can talk to a table or I can talk to my wife. The table sits. Beth sits, listens and responds. This talk and response is essential to relationship. It is essential to friendship. We all talk to God. Even non-Christians talk to God, but if we stop there we have an equivalent to the table-relationship. I want to take the time to help those who don’t hear from God to begin the process. Maybe no one reading this is in that position. If so, then I hope to encourage listening to God on a greater level and frequency. Why not pursue the living and interactive God?

John 10:1-5 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. (2) But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. (3) To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. (4) When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. (5) A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

John 10:25-28 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, (26) but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. (27) My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (28) I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

I understand that Jesus was talking to specific people in a specific place almost 2000 years ago. I don’t claim that this passage was written to me. I do think that it applies to us today. The sheep or flock is referring to those who are His, those who know Him. For the sake of this article it is us. We believers are His sheep. We follow Him, for we know His voice. We hear His voice, and He knows us (intimate relational knowledge), and we follow Him. To these He says He gives eternal life. I love our God. He is so personal, so vast yet so simple.

So how do we hear God? How does God speak? In no particular order of frequency or importance I will lay out a few of the ways God spoke to people in the Bible.

The Bible

Psalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

I think this is very commonly understood. God gave us the Bible. It is His word for us, His direction for our life. If I wonder what God’s will is for me, I look in the Bible. I read directives and follow them.

An inner voice

Acts 8:29 And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.”

The Holy Spirit spoke to Philip, and Philip obeyed. It was God speaking directly to the thoughts of a person. There was no angel, no voice from the clouds (at least none of that is written). When I hear from God, it is usually in this manner. It is almost a thought that is louder or clearer than my own. I recognize it when I hear it because I’ve practiced and have become familiar with the voice of the Shepherd.

Godly people

Acts 8:34-36 And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (35) Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. (36) And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”

God spoke to the eunuch through a Godly person (Philip). God does this today. God uses individuals to give us specific direction and wisdom. God did this with Moses, and God does this today with our pastors, counselors and even our friends.

Circumstances

1 Corinthians 16:8-9 But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, (9) for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

This is interesting to me. How did Paul get direction for his next step? A wide door was opened. As far as we can tell God didn’t speak directly to him. He didn’t search his Torah or a letter from Peter. It was simply that the circumstances opened for him to minister. Sometimes God just gives us good circumstances or situations.

Supernatural events: angels, visions, dreams, signs

Numbers 22:28,31 Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” (31) Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand. And he bowed down and fell on his face.

Acts 9:3-4 Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. (4) And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

This is less common. If not it wouldn’t be supernatural. It would be natural. Nevertheless it happened, and I think it does today. God is infinitely creative, and He is interactive. He sometimes does really cool things like these simply to speak to an individual, not without cause or reason, however.

Inner peace

2 Corinthians 2:12-13 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, (13) my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

Here Paul receives direction through a lack of peace. There are times when God speaks to us by giving us peace or the opposite of peace. This is not an excuse to be led by our emotions.

When hearing from God by some of these methods it would be very easy to go wrong. We hear of extreme cases where people kill their children because “God told them to.” Some people start new religions based on “hearing God.” People come up with new doctrines that “God revealed to them.” So how do we proceed? How do we know when God is really speaking to us? How do we come to know the voice of our Shepherd?

When God speaks to us it will line up with the Bible. The word of the Lord to us will never contradict scripture. Godly people will affirm it. If I hear from God, I can take that to my pastor and ask for wisdom and confirmation. The Holy Spirit will give us peace about it. God’s directions for our lives will never violate our conscience.

Finally, I think we come to know His voice by coming to know Him. Spend time with God. Give Him the chance to speak. Practice speaking to Him, and at the same time practice hearing Him. The more I hear a voice the easier it is to recognize it in the future.

About six years ago I was walking at a ranch spending time with God. Suddenly, I heard God say, “Run!” I began to run. “Run faster!” So I ran faster. “Turn right!” I did. “Turn left! Keep running.” Then I came into a clearing and saw the most beautiful sunset. If I had kept walking I never would have seen it. God was interacting with me, speaking to me simply because He loved me and wanted to share in a relationship.

God is personal and interactive. He loves relationship. He desires our friendship. Give Him a chance. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you.

This blog is the product of a lot of reading and listening, long nights of homework, several hours in a classroom setting and a whole lot of thinking. I wrote it a year ago, but I think it is still relevant. Read through it, and let me know what you think. I am no history major, but I think I’ve managed to keep events in order and avoided minute details. So without further ado I give you a few pages of my thoughts.

Looking at the stories of our church’s history has been of immense value. I think God is gracious to us in giving us historians and people who have the convenient desire to record. The whole of it is that we can look humbly at the mistakes and accomplishments of the people who lived before us. We can then evaluate, repeat the accomplishments and not make the mistakes again. Our history is a collection of a whole lot of mistakes, a few humble people who loved the Lord and became heroes, and a good God seeing that His purpose of relationship with people is possible.

The first two centuries or so of Christianity were nothing short of amazing. With just 12 and then 70 and then 120 people the world was changed. The Church was filled with committed believers who were constantly faced with the possibility of being brutally killed for their relationship with God. The Church was led by even crazierly committed believers. No one would pridefully lead a group of Christians. There was nothing to gain personally. All they were promised was continued fellowship with God. The world offered them more stress and a shorter life for their choice. But God was with them. This is the first lesson to apply. No matter how bad or good the circumstances, if God is with a group they will succeed, and if not, they won’t. The first few generations of Christians were met with the power of God and as a result Christianity spread rapidly in almost all directions. I don’t know of many mistakes they made. It seems that most of their problems arose from sneaky, evil, non-Christian people joining their group and teaching sneaky, evil, not-Christian doctrine. This was mostly hammered out healthily.

In the beginning of the fourth century Emperor Constantine did a nice thing that helped lead to some of the worst possible things. The nice part was that he stopped the killing of Christians. Church leaders and churchgoers alike could live and worship at the same time. The negative effect was that Christianity became popular. So for the next 1100 years or so the Church grew in number, but the number of actual converts did not meet the number of people in the Church or in leadership. Men pursued position in church leadership out of selfish gain. It became a chance for power over people sometimes over a nation or an empire. It also at times was a chance for great wealth.

Also around 200 AD Clement and Origen introduced an allegorical method of interpreting the Bible. The idea was that there was a hidden deeper meaning in the Bible. More spiritual people were able to find these special meanings and apply them. This led to bizarre and unbiblical doctrine and practices. So this special ability to interpret mixed with selfish church leaders led to a mess. The leaders took the scriptures away from the ordinary people, so the people had to simply trust those over them for the word of God.

Every one of these pitfalls must be avoided for the Church to be healthy. We cannot have people in leadership who are selfish and seeking power. We cannot assume there are special hidden meanings in the Bible, and we cannot take the scriptures away from people. These eleven centuries showed us the pain and destruction that comes about. People weren’t really saved. They didn’t even know what it meant to be. They lived Sunday to Sunday, hoping that the priest would give them the sacraments and that they would be okay. Or these people spent what very little money they had to buy an indulgence and secure their soul. The priests sold these indulgences and even allowed for future sins to be forgiven. Thus people who felt guilty could surrender some money to the church and then feel not guilty having a false assurance of their salvation. I think the worst thing about it all is that these people did not know God. How scary and lonely it must have been to live without the closeness of God.

Yet God is and was so gracious. He always made sure that He had a few people who hadn’t soiled their garments (people who knew Him and were dedicated to His word). God is so intelligent. He even used people and nations who had wrong agendas to preserve scriptures and truth or at least make it available. There were also several people who made negative contributions out of a seemingly good heart. Origen and Clement were not out to harm the church. Augustine with his strange contributions didn’t do so out of an evil heart. They loved God and people and wanted truth and freedom to abound. The problem was they had less to work with and hadn’t seen the effects of their ideas played out through history. Christians today (especially those who read Shelley’s book) do have this benefit, and so we can take the mistakes and make them lessons to bring the Kingdom of God to more advancement.

From about 1400 to the early 1800s we have a nice period of church growth. Several individuals found the real living God of the Bible and got the scriptures in their hands. This led to groups of people who had the same and then to very large groups. We have Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, Tyndale, Zinzendorf, Locke, Wesley, Whitfield, Edwards, Finney and so many more to thank for where we are today. We now have access to scripture and access to God. They were beaten, mocked, and killed with the result that we are free to live with liberty of conscience and know God.

The way men have tried to bring about the Kingdom of God has varied. The first church fathers did it just as Jesus taught. They reached out to individuals and led them to Jesus changing their hearts. The Kingdom spread from the internal to the external. From 300 to 1400ish there were numerous incidents of church leaders and political leaders trying to bring about the Kingdom of God in a reverse fashion, forcing conversions and mandating the worship of God. Righteous and heathen alike were killed for not conforming to the particular leader’s ideal. Other leaders have allowed for free choice to join the church or not but then have forced external righteousness on their followers. This tendency has continued in isolation through all of the good movements of the Reformation and the Great Awakening. Though overall what has happened is the Kingdom of God has come about through transformed individuals introducing other individuals to the Savior, Jesus.

I think the bottom line is this: the Kingdom of God has advanced and is advancing in cooperation with and in spite of man. God works with men who freely choose to work with Him. At the times when men chose this path things were great. There of course was much opposition, but the church grew. People were converted in droves. In those other times when men chose to oppose God or to advance their own kingdom God was gracious. They weren’t just let off the hook, but the rest of the innocent world was not given up on. God searched for humble people and used infinite creativity to see that His purposes came about. He always made salvation possible and thus His Kingdom was always advancing. It was often like the parables said it would be with no evidence of growth and then BAM! Where did that come from? So this last paragraph here is the personal lesson I’ve learned. The Bible is true. God is alive and active in the lives of men. History has shown this from Adam to now. I am more than fortunate to be a part of it and to know God.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived the most beautiful princess. She was happy and content living with her family. But one horrible day a fierce dragon came and snatched her away. He carried her to the most wretched excuse for a castle in the most wretched of lands where it was always dark, always lonely and always undesirable.

Now, every prince in the land longed for this princess to be his wife. One by one they summoned every bit of courage they could find and stormed the castle, only to be instantly destroyed by the dragon.  It seemed as though the princess would be lost forever. No one could save her from the dragon…. except for one man. He was as valiant and strong as she was beautiful. He had a deep voice and a sword as fierce as the dragon. He ran up to the castle with his heart set on saving the princess. As he approached the dragon he scoffed and ran right past it. On he ran until he reached his princess. She was more beautiful than he ever remembered. He knew he loved her. He also knew that they should leave, wasting no time and stopping for nothing.

So he grabbed her hand and they ran. They ran right out of the castle and away from the wicked land. Every few minutes he would squeeze her hand to make sure she was still with him and still safe. When he knew they were far enough away, he finally looked behind him. His heart sank and his eyes filled with tears. His princess was still there, and she was still the most beautiful being he had ever laid eyes on. But something was terribly wrong.  For what he saw was his princess holding onto the dragon with her other hand. She had pulled it along the entire journey.

With tears still in his eyes and a great love for her he spoke, “I thought I saved you, but from what? You have brought the dragon with us.”

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If she wasn’t saved from the dragon, what was she saved from? Was she saved at all?

A friend of mine told me this story, and I tell it to you to illustrate what I think is one of the most important things we can understand. When we are saved, we are not just saved from Hell. Hell is not the reason we need a savior. What I’d like to submit is that Jesus saves us from sin – our sin. 

Eph 2:1-5  “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins  (2)  in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience–  (3)  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  (4)  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  (5)  even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– ”

Paul doesn’t speak of Hell here. He says the Ephesians were dead in sins. Then he talks about sin some more and then says that they have been saved. People when saved are saved from sin. When we paint the gospel to be a message of salvation from Hell, we miss it. We appeal to the person’s selfishness. Why go to Hell when you can have this nice Heaven? And in this way, we can easily add more jewels in our crowns. We can easily get people “saved.” But if it stops there, I would question whether they are saved. After all what were they saved from?

Sin is the dragon in the story. God wants to save us. He accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished on the Cross. But for us to be saved, we must let go of the dragon’s hand. We have to leave sin behind.

1Jn 3:6-10  No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.  (7)  Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.  (8)  Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.  (9)  No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.  (10)  By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.