I don't understand!

    We've all had those studies in school that we had to take that pushed our ability to understand the subject.  Subjects, that no matter how much we read the material, we can't seem to wrap our brains around.  For me, that subject was Quantum Physics.  I did well in my other studies in college.  I could handle Calculus, Newtonian Physics, Thermodynamics, Differential Equations, Chemistry, Statics, Dynamics with a little bit of effort, but when it came to Quantum Physics it was a whole different matter.  Essentially we were told at the beginning to put aside Newtonian Physics altogether because it didn't apply here.   Electrons were NOT round balls of mass moving around in space, but instead were particle-waves moving from one state to another.   No longer can you say the electron goes from point A to point B and arrives at time T because you don't know with any certainty where the electron really is and what it's momentum is.  Here we can only predict a probability that it will arrive and that is about as best as we can do.  No matter how hard I tried to "reason it through" I could not.  My professor told us to just take the course on FAITH that this is how the world works at the sub-atomic level.

   FAITH IN SCIENCE????

    Seems like this is an oxymoron.  Two things that have nothing to do with each other somehow had become intertwined.   But it was the only way forward for me to get through this class.   I took his advice and plowed through it resisting the whole time my desire to "figure it out" or "see what is happening".  (I managed an A- out of it).

    Our faith in Jesus is often much like Quantum Physics.   What does not make sense to us, makes sense to God in his kingdom.   To me, Jesus sounds a lot like my Quantum Physics professor as he tries and tries to get across to the people what God's Kingdom is like and how it works.  Words fail to fully express it.  He tries multiple parables to get it across to different people

Are you a farmer?         Listen to my story about a lost sheep
Are you a wife?             Listen to my story of the woman and the lost coin
Are you a merchant?     Listen to my story about the pearl of great price
Are you a land owner?  Listen to my story about the hidden treasure

It doesn't make sense!

    The problem for most of us in listening to these stories is we don't see the sense in it.  First in the story of the lost sheep, it's about 1 sheep that leaves the fold of 100 and the shepherd leaves the 99 for the 1 that is lost.  The numbers don't add up!  The ONE is worth more than the 99?  How?  Next, Jesus says, "He returns with joy!".    Over ONE sheep?  Why?  He has 99 that didn't get lost!

    In the Lost Coin story a woman carelessly loses a coin of great value.  Back then woman were the banks of the family and stored their wealth in a bag on a string around their neck.  Somehow a coin had rolled out of the bag and was now lost.  When she finds it after sweeping the floor she runs to her neighbors with joy yelling, "Rejoice with me! I have found my lost coin!".   You and I would not be so proud of our accomplishment.  It's like saying, "Rejoice with me! My 401K which was savaged by my foolish investments has returned back to its original value!". 

   In both the stories of the Pearl of Great Price and the Hidden Treasure, something of great value was somehow overlooked and found by a person who then must go and sell EVERYTHING he has to gain that property.  Who does he pay to?  He hasn't even had it appraised.  What if it's less than what he sold to gain it?

You have intrinsic value to God that you don't see

    In all the stories there is something of value to the owner.  A sheep.  A coin.  A pearl.  A treasure.  It doesn't matter what everyone else thinks.   He wants to obtain the item again and must spend time, energy and property to obtain it back.  I remember one time being confused about the story of the hidden treasure.  I had gotten the story backwards.  I thought the man was ME and the treasure was God's Kingdom and I should give all I have to obtain it.  But a good Lutheran pastor told me I had it backwards.  He told me, "John, YOU are the treasure in the story and GOD is the man who sells everything to obtain you".

    The issue here is that we don't see ourselves as a priceless treasure (maybe a stupid sheep... but not a pearl or chest full of gold coins).  Maybe when we are younger we might feel this way, but life has a way of tarnishing that treasure we see.   What we thought was gold was not gold.  Sins we thought we would never do we find ourselves committing.  We then perceive our value to diminish in God's eyes.  We then begin to think,  "Certainly I am not worth much now to him now!"

   But we need to understand that our value is not connected with what we do or not do.  In all the stories that value is assigned by the owner/finder. The items do nothing to find their way back to the person looking for them.  They are found by the person on their own.  Our value is not connected to our actions.  He created you and therefore you have value to him.  You, like the sheep/coin that gets lost, are bound by sin to fall away.  Your value, however, is greater than the cost it takes to retrieve the item and some ways the item is worth even more now to God than it was before.  God's accounting does not equate to our accounting on earth.  What looks like foolishness to us is wisdom to God.

The cost is paid back to himself.

   The final issue we have in understanding these stories is who the money/cost is paid back to?  Is it Satan?  Who?   The answer is to God himself.  Imagine a friend borrows you car and runs off the road and totals the vehicle (let's say for this story there is no insurance involved).  Your friend is without a job and has no way to pay you back.  You must therefore pay out of your own pocket to restore the car.  When you return with the new car you hand the keys to your friend and tell him to use it as long as he has need of it.  Why?  Because you value your friendship more than you value the car.  You LOVE your friend MORE than you love the money you lost.  Both in Economics and in Christianity we call this by the same name:  The Great Exchange.   In Economics, if I pay $5 for a gallon of milk to a store owner, both he and I walk away with more.  He valued my $5 more than the milk and is glad to take it.  I value the milk more than my $5 and I am glad to take it.  In God's world he sees our value as his creation as being greater than the cost of his Sons own life and gladly gives it for us.

St. Paul writes in Romans 8:32,

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Faith is what you need

    Of course, all of our "analogies" fail at some point to fully compare to God's world.  We must, like myself when taking Quantum Physics, accept what we are told with FAITH and ACCEPT it as the TRUTH it really is.    The debt is paid.  The door is open.  You are loved by God.

Front doors do matter

  I just got done sweeping on the front entryway into our house and it got me to thinking.   We put a lot of importance on our front doorway.   First we spend money to make a nice flat and level concrete surface for our visitors to walk on because we don't want them to trip or get their feet muddy while coming to our house.   Some people even put solar powered lights to illuminate the entryway at night so it's easy to see.   We also put a light near the door so they can see where the door is and where we have put the doorbell for them to ring.   We put plants and flowers near the door as well to make their coming here pleasant.  We also put a seat near the door for older visitors to sit at while they wait for us to come to the door to greet them.

 

   Front doors do matter!

   Today, many say that there is more than ONE way to heaven.  All that matters is you are sincere in your beliefs and want to help others.  But Jesus says in  John 14:6

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

and in John 10:9 he also says,

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.

  My argument with the "All ways go to heaven" crowd is simply this:  "Why would God go through all the trouble of building a front door then?".    The issue is that all other "teachers or prophets" (such as Confucius, Buddha, Mohammad) just appear on the seen out of no where.  No prophecy to predict their coming.  No promises from God to keep.  No effort on God's part to prepare their coming.   Jesus, on the other hand, doesn't just pop on the scene to announce God's grace and forgiveness out of nowhere.  Instead, God works over thousands of years and his plan takes literally thousands of years and the pain, suffering and death of many of his servants to bring it all about.  Abraham is told to go live as a tent-dweller and wait for God to give him a son in his old age.  Joseph is sold into slavery to Egypt and suffers imprisonment for obeying God.  Moses leaves his lofty position as next in line of Pharaoh to lead his people out of Egypt.  Elijah is chased from town to town by worshipers of Baal and forced to live in the desert.   Jeremiah is thrown down a well for his denunciation of idol worship and ignoring God. Daniel is thrown in a lions den for praying to his God and not praying to the king.   If God was going to allow ANY route into heaven, then he wasted all his time and energy with sending his own Son Jesus to bear all of our sins.

   If we invite someone over we EXPECT  them to use the front door.  If they decide to use the window or the back door we would probably call the police to report an intruder.  If we used the same "all ways lead to heaven" argument, you would be confronted with policemen who would tell you that the intruder is just a visitor who chose to use an alternate means of entering your house and since there is no one acceptable way to enter a house there is nothing illegal about it.  You would argue that you DO care about how a person enters your house!

  God does care about how you enter too.

   In the story about the Wedding Feast, Jesus says that at the end there was found a man who was not wearing wedding clothes.  The King asks him, "Friend, why are you not wearing the wedding clothes I have provided?".   At this the man was speechless and he was thrown outside.  That is how those who come to God but want to have nothing with the forgiveness he has so graciously provided through Jesus his only Son who died on the cross for them.

Dealing with our "faults"

   In computers, errors are a constant source of problems.  Almost every part of a computer tries to detect and even fix errors as they occur.  Your hard-drive stores a value called a checksum on every 4K byte sector and whenever that sector is read, a checksum is computed and compared to the value stored.   If there is a mismatch, the computer might try to re-read the sector again to fix the error.  Your computer memory can have Error-Code-Correcting bits stored to not only detect a bit flip (0 becomes 1 or a 1 becomes 0) it can actually determine which bit is wrong and fix it on the fly.  When your computer sends or receives data over the internet, its data is checked and re-checked along the way to make sure it arrives unchanged from the source.

   But there is one place in a computer where errors are hard to detect and fix.  That place is the microprocessor.  Often referred to as the "brains" of the computer it can't see where it's going wrong. If it adds 1+1 and gets 3, then it will always add and get the same number.  The only way for it to detect a fault is to compare itself to another CPU running the same code in parallel with the idea that having two-heads is better than one.  But even if it does see a mismatch with the other CPU, it can't determine who is wrong and who is right.

   We as humans are like these microprocessors.  We know we are not perfect and we look to find someone to compare our lives to in order to stay on track.  It might be a sports figure like Tom Brady or a Hollywood actor like John Wayne.   But these people are as faulty as we are and we are always disappointed in the end. 

   In Psalm 19:12, King David writes:

   "Who can discern his errors?
    Forgive my hidden faults"

    I remember when a friend of mine suffered a mental breakdown from the struggles of life.  I had not seen him in many years and he came back to our company to work with us.  We could tell something was wrong with him and at first just ignored it.   After a few weeks though it became very apparent to all that he was not right in his head.  He was sending out long winded emails to various people about things that had nothing to do with work.  He wasn't coming into work but was working from home.  My boss sent me to go talk to him and see what was wrong.   I went to his place and it was like a scene out of the movies "A Beautiful Mind".  The walls of his apartment were covered with newspaper and magazine articles and the floor was cluttered with empty bottles of Coke and boxes of pizza and Chinese food.  I tried to get through to him that he needed help but he was convinced he was fine and in need of no help.  He was sure that everything was going to be fine once he solved this problem he was working on for our company.

  Our brains, like my friends, are so fouled up with sin we cannot even see our own faults.  We may even think that certain qualities we have are "good"  when in fact they are "bad" for us.   We have hidden our faults so well we can't even see them anymore.   But God does see them and he has pity on us.

   Jesus said to the crowds below him as he hung on the cross

  "Father!  Forgive them for they know not what they are doing!"

He was not just saying that to the Pharisees that had come to witness his death, but also about us as well.   We think we know so much these days and are convinced that it's GOD that has it all wrong and not us.   We are fine and everything will be better once we fix these few problems we have.

  So where are we left?   Who do we compare ourselves to?  How do we make sure we don't go too far away from where we should be?

Jesus has the answer:

 "I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.  

   No one comes to the Father except by me"

I highlight the word TRUTH here because he is who we are supposed to be.  He is the benchmark.  Of course we can never measure up and he knows that.  That is why he credits our lives with his righteousness and atones for us.