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.

No Shortcuts

My son when he has about 8 or 9 would often ask when we were driving somewhere "Dad? Do you know a shortcut?"  To his question I would have to reply "No Derek. There are no shortcuts".   

We are all like my son Derek.  We look for short cuts in life to make our lives easier in some way.  Some people who are scared of marriage think that living together is a way to "short-cut" the process.  Marriage seems to long and difficult and we want a way to "try it out before buying".  But all too often this only worsens the relationship when they do decide to get married because they have developed bad habits that are not conducive to a good marriage.  Some people never even get to the alter at all and waste many years trying to convince the other to take that final step.  

Other people who get addicted to drugs see drugs as a way to "short-cut" the process to feeling good.   Our brains develop their own opiates internally but it takes a lot of hard work to produce them naturally.   A pill form is so much easier of a process and many go fall for it's false claim.  We look for short-cuts in our jobs and careers.   It could be lying to customers to gain sales or lying to our boss to gain their confidence. Eventually these lies catch up with us in the end. 

We also want shortcuts when it comes to our faith too.  Do I have to go to church?  Can't i just listen to the sermon when I have nothing better to do?  Do I have to give money to the church?  Can't i just tweet or give a Facebook share once and a while?  Do my kids really have to spend 2 years in confirmation?  Can't they just go on a weekend retreat and cover everything they need to know?  Do I have to forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?  Can't i just send them a text on their birthday or something?

In Matthew that when Jesus was about to be crucified they tried to give him wine mixed with gall which was a type of pain killer to help make him less resistant to them nailing him.  Jesus instead spits it out and refuses to drink it.   Here is Jesus being given a pain killer to help get him through it and he refuses to drink it.  One wonders what the soldiers thought when they saw this.  I hate pain so much I would be just the opposite here and drink as much as I could, but not our Savior.  No one was going to be able to point at him and say later, "He didn't feel a thing!".  He was determined to take all of our suffering on him.

Jesus never took a short-cut to saving us and we should never take short-cuts in our relationship with him or with each other.   

WHY

   The word "why" seems to be one of the first words children seem to learn, right after "momma", "dadda" and "no".    This word can drive a parent to near insanity on long car rides.

Why is the sky blue?
Why is the grass green?
Why can't I drive the car?
Why do we need to go on vacation?
Why can't we stop for ice cream?

The questions seem unending to a young parent.  This line of questioning would put a CIA operative to shame who must resort to water-boarding to inflict higher levels of pain and mental distress.

Some questions of "why" we can answer, but the child is too young to even understand our answer if we gave it to them.   We know that such answers would only be open to 10 more "why" questions that we don't have the time or energy to answer.  To this, we often resort to our simple answer:  "Because it just IS!",  This answer will hold a 5 year old for about 10 seconds before they bellow out a loud "WHY?" from the back seat of the car.

On Good Friday, while Jesus is hanging on the cross he screams out a question for God the Father to answer:

"My God! My God!  Why have you forsaken me?"

Christ, suspended on a cross between two worlds: earth and heaven.  Rejected by the earth and forsaken by the Father.

Why?

Why is often the hardest question to answer in stories like this.  Journalists can give you the Who, What, Where and How, but often they struggle to come up with the WHY.    When a crazed husband shoots his wife at her school and 2 other children we are left empty when we search for the reason of WHY.  Or when a soldier sees his friend take on heavy fire from the enemy and dies so he can crawl to safety we are left empty as we search for the answer to WHY.

The answer to Jesus' question comes to us earlier in the book of John

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life"

The answer is because he loves us.

All to often we get too caught up in answering the other questions that we overlook (or maybe we just don't want to face it) the most important of questions.  Knowing HOW Jesus died, WHERE Jesus died, WHEN Jesus died won't bring you any closer to God.  Today we are blessed with great cinematography and actors who can portray Christ's suffering in great detail and almost make you feel like you are standing right there under the cross.  But that won't save anyone.  Only when they come to face the question of WHY... are lives changed.   When we see that it was for US that Christ died.  He acted as the mother stepping in front of her child to shield them from the oncoming bullet to protect them.

I have often found it amazing that the one thing you can say to a child that you will never get a WHY question for is this:   I LOVE YOU!

Children just get it.  They accept it.   They know they are not perfect, but they accept the love of their parent as irrefutable and will often immediately respond with "I LOVE YOU DADDY!"

God loves you too and all he asks us to do is to accept it and not ask WHY.

Take up your cross and follow me!

   As Christians, we have all read Jesus famous words, "Take up your cross and follow me!"   We think about them when faced with adversity or painful suffering for the faith.  I am sure that the people who were standing there listening to Jesus must have had their eyes bugging out of their heads when they heard it.   They knew EXACTLY what Jesus meant.  They had witnessed the brutal Roman execution method hundreds, if not thousands of times.   The Romans had used it on a group of Jews who had tried to start a rebellion and had lined the roads leading to Jerusalem with their crosses as warning to anyone thinking they could secede from Rome.  To Christians living today in countries where paying this ultimate sacrifice is as likely as a snow day in Miami, its hard to put into perspective.   We sometimes carelessly use this phrase when we face some sort of minor adversity, "Oh well we all have our crosses to bear!"  ( I have never liked this use of this verse )

    But I think Jesus was not only referring to the ultimate cost of being a disciple, but also the physical act of forgiveness.  One reason I believe this is because of one little word we overlook in the verse we quote,

3 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 

   That little word "daily" says it all.  For if Jesus was talking about carrying a real cross, then you certainly would not be able to do that "daily".  While, yes, we do suffer insults and harsh criticism for being a follower of Jesus, we don't often take on martyrdom for the faith.  However we must look more at this verse and ask ourselves this question: what was Jesus doing on that cross for us?   He lovingly picked up that cross-beam and carried it to Golgatha so our sins can be wiped clean before God.   He took the beatings, whippings, flogging and crucifixion so we would not need to.  He bore our sins for us to repair the relationship between us and God.

   So how does that relate to us?

   Jesus often talked about the need for us to forgive one another as we have been forgiven.  This forgiveness is not cheap.  It comes at a price.  It can be painful.  It can be difficult.  We are called to pick up our sin-bearing crosses as well for those who have sinned against us!   We don't do this grudgingly but are called to have the same mindset of Christ himself who

"For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God

   Forgiveness is often hard.  The pain that others have inflicted on us from their carelessness and lack of love for us .... hurts.  That pain is inversely proportioned to how close they are to us.  The closer the more painful it is.  

    Peter asks Jesus a "hypothetical" question when he asks:  "Lord how often should I forgive my brother?  Seven times?".   Sometimes I wonder which "brother" Peter had in mind when he was asking this?  Was it one of the disciples?  To this Jesus replies, "Not seven times, but SEVEN TIMES SEVENTY!"   This was akin the Buzz Lightyear phrase:  "To Infinity and Beyond!"

    The "sins of a brother" are more sinister than just the sin of a stranger.  The stranger has no desire to be in a relationship with us.  Because of this, those sins hold no power over them.  The sins of a brother are from someone who wants to be in a relationship with us, therefore they give us power over them.    We can dangle those sins in front of their faces when we want or need something from them. But that is not what Christ wants from us.   Christ was faced with the same problem.  The sins we have done against God were against him.  Yet he did not hold onto them.  He carried them to the cross and left them there.

   The other aspect that Jesus confronts with forgiving a brother "Seven time Seventy!" is that because we are in relationship with that brother/sister they WILL sin against us again.... and again.... and again.  It's been said that it's often easier to forgive a total stranger than it is to forgive a family member.  The stranger will be gone a few minutes from now, but a family member is near you constantly.   The stranger's offense is a one-and-done sin (like a bee sting) that hurts for a short while.  But a person close to you will hurt you on a daily, if not hourly, basis.   Like the scourging Jesus received from the Roman soldiers.  It can feel like it will never end.  You might think it's over (the time between offenses) like Jesus might have felt between the beatings.  But it's not!  The person was just reloading.  

   The easy way is the way Peter was hoping for.  He was hoping for a limit on forgiveness that would allow him to end the relationship and thereby end the pain they  might inflict on us.  You can almost hear Peter pleading with Jesus as he offers him his "seven times?" bargain hunting expedition.  Ending the relationship is always easier.  The problem is that we end up cutting all ties to everyone.  CS Lewis wrote in his book, "The Great Divorce", about driving through hell where people were separated from each other by light-years of distance.  They were not separated like that by God but by their own doing.  They would rather live all alone than be possibly hurt by their interaction with other people.

  That is not how Christ wants us to be.  He ended the separation between US and GOD.  We, as well, should take up our cross of forgiving others for the JOY of having them back in relationship with us. So we too should join him in his endeavor to heal broken relationships by taking up our crosses of forgiveness of those close to us as well.

Why I believe the Bible is consistent with Science

    Growing up in a Lutheran home I was taught that the Bible is the inspired word of God. PERIOD.  As a Christian, I still believe that whole heartily today as well, but it has taken my some time to find my way back to the truth through the years.

    I still remember taking Biology for the first time in High School.  I didn't get the teacher I wanted at the time.  I had wanted to get Mr Brown who was my Cross Country coach and also my Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader as well.  Instead I got Mr. Taylor, the Track and Golf coach.  We all referred to him as Mr. Darwin outside of class among ourselves because every part of his subject always somehow got pulled back into the subject of Evolution.  It was a difficult year for me and I had to spend extra time reading other articles on the subject in order to debate him on the subject and hold onto my faith that the earth was really only about 10,000 years old and Genesis was correct.

    For the most part, I held on to my faith through all of my high school years.  It wasn't really until I went to college and began to study Astronomy and other subjects that I began to wonder.  Is Genesis right?  I didn't really know any more.   They were so different and so far apart, how can you make sense of it.  I was told that either Genesis is correct or Darwin is correct?   It often haunted me.  I would later watch shows on TV showing the immensity of space.  Galaxies billions of light-years apart spread out through the universe and I am in one small planet among an uncountable number.  My smallness became even smaller and I struggled with how God could know me... ME... intimately.

   When these shows would come on I would shrink away from them and find other things to watch.  It scared me.   It seemed like a dagger in the Bible as well for if Genesis is wrong, then what else is wrong?   I knew I had to come to a conclusion, but which one?  Being well educated in math and science it almost seemed like I was doomed to make the wrong one.  But I knew God was big enough to answer my questions and he even challenges us too.  He says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your MIND".   He doesn't need for me to go get a lobotomy to be his disciple.    I also knew that some of the greatest thinkers and scientists in the world were Christians too.   Sir Isaac Newton (father of physics and calculus) was a very devout Christian.  CS Lewis, professor of Philosophy and Ancient Literature at Cambridge was at first an atheist and then later one of the most prolific writers of Christianity in the 20th century.   But even with this great company I needed more.  I needed to see it for myself.   I needed to be like Thomas and challenge the Lord on this and I knew he would answer me.

    It was during this time God put in my heart to lead an adult bible study at my church on the subject.  It forced me to put it down on paper and think it all through and as I did it became clearer and clearer to me.   The issue is not if Genesis is right OR Science was right, but instead that they BOTH were right.   This is not to say I think we evolved from apes.  No.  That part I do not accept and much in science today has yet to confirm that idea yet.   But of the things we are pretty certain on I think there is a lot of agreement.

   So let us begin...

In the beginning....

   First to start, we must see how we received the book of Genesis.   It didn't come straight to us in the 21st century.  This is the fundamental mistake many who read the Bible fail to acknowledge.  While,yes the Bible is the inspired word of God and God speaks to us through is word, it is given through the people of their time and in their language.  Genesis was written by Moses, but maybe even earlier to Abraham and passed down through his people.   Abraham lived around 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in the city of Ur (one of the first civilizations).  His language was not like ours today.  Today we have about 20,000 words in our dictionaries to choose from, whereas Abraham may have had as little as 1000 words.  His knowledge of the world was also limited.  While he did move from Ur to where Israel is today, he knew little of how big the world was let alone how big the Universe was.  To Abraham the world may have only been a few 100 miles across and the stars were with in reach (or least the people of Babel thought they were).  Finally, we do not know Abraham's math skills.   Counting was of some importance but numbers above 10 might not be needed much.  To illustrate this, see how God communicates to Abraham how many descendants he will have.  He uses a picture-board of sorts with Abraham and says they will be more numerous than the "stars in the heavens" rather than giving him a large number.

   In short, Abraham had the language and world-view of a 5 year-old compared to us today.  We often forget those important facts and we often pull these people from the pages and make them fit our modern world or impose on them our language and world-view.   Neither of these are right when we read the Bible and often we do.   Would you berate a 5 year-old for not knowing calculus or Newton's 1st law of motion?   Of course not!   Neither should we expect that of Abraham, Moses, David or many other OT people.    They are who they are and we do not need to apologize for their attitudes or traditions that may seem foreign to us.  In fact, Genesis chapter 1 has only 784 total words and only 218 UNIQUE words in it and may be why it reads so simply.

    Note: this is not to at all say Abraham is primitive in his thinking at all.  For example, Abraham knows that there are limits on what a humans body is capable.  He knows that advanced age makes it impossible to bear children.   He also is willing to sacrifice himself to save his nephew and goes to war to free him.   He also bargains with God on Sodom and Gomorrah and reasons with God on how wrong it would be to destroy the righteous with the evil.   All I am saying here is that knowledge of space and science to his people of that time is limited compared to us.   

    To illustrate this in modern terms, consider a child's interest in the baby-making process.  So how do you tell a 5 year-old how they got here?   When it comes to children who are curious about how their baby brother/sister arrived here we must tell them the TRUTH in a way that they can understand it and in their own language.  You can't use big words like, gestation, or sexual intercourse with them.   You can't talk about DNA or Fetus or Embryos.  They just are not ready for that yet.  You don't want to lie to them as this will later destroy your credibility with them on future subjects.  A simple way you may want to address this is by saying to them:

"A special love that only a Mother and Father can have was blessed by God and put you inside your mother's belly!"

      Did you lie to your child? Absolutely not!   You answered his question in an honest and loving way that does not diminish your authority as a parent on future questions and you conveyed some very important principles such as love and the miracle of birth to him.  It's an answer that is both understandable and ,at the heart, truthful.

So also God must convey this important TRUTH to Abraham as well.  He must convey to him the following:

1. God is in control of earths events (nothing happens without his permission)
2. God is very powerful
3. God is a God of order
4. God loves him.

This is exactly what God does in Genesis.

    When you compare the story in Genesis to what science today tells us, they are really not very far apart at all.  In fact, in some ways Genesis was right FIRST and science later caught up with it.

Story of Creation as told be God:

1. There is a beginning of time.
2. Earth is void ... empty... null
3. First act of creation ...LIGHT ... followed closely by DARKNESS.
4. Earth is created and all the land is on one place
5. Plant life is created
6. Fish and Birds are created
7. Land animals are created
8. Man is created

Story of Creation as told by Science

1. There is only the singularity and nothing else... emptiness
2. There is a beginning of time (the singularity expands suddenly and unexplainably)
3. The universe cools and the first atomic particles created are electrons. Because electrons do not want to be near other electrons they push strongly against each other and expand rapidly creating the first visible event in the universe.  That event is the creation of Electromagnetic energy (light).  The brightest even our universe ever saw.   Later as the expanding universe cools protons and neutrons are created and combine to form the first atom: Hydrogen.  
4. Eventually earth is created.  According to plate tectonics all the earth plates started in one place creating a huge singe Super-Continent called: Pangaea.  
5. First life form created is plant life as RNA is simpler to assemble than DNA. Most likely mold or fungus. 
6. Life is thought to first start in the oceans with small single-cell life and then advance onto higher forms 
7. Sea life eventually evolves and moves onto land slowly as fish searching for more food or to get away from predators find ways to adapt and stay out of the water for longer periods of time.
8. Man eventually come 

       As you can see our two stories are not that different as I left out the days vs billions of years factor.

Why DAYS and not BILLIONS OF YEARS

     But why would God say it was 6 days when it was really longer though?  Isn't that another argument against the Bible?   Actually it isn't at all.  Remember, Abraham has limited math knowledge.  He may only be able to count to 10 on his fingers.   Larger numbers don't come into play in his life, so God can't use numbers that have no meaning to him.

     Another reason God uses a shortened time frame is that God can use this to illustrate to Abraham his immense power.   This idea came to me when I was at work.  I had just finished developing a new tool and an amazed co-worker asked we how long it took to create it.  I answered "Oh I did it over the weekend", when in fact I had started it earlier the previous week.  I said "weekend" to make myself look better in his eyes (yes I have an ego just like you!).  But God doesn't do this to puff up his ego.  He has a legitimate reason for doing this: To show how powerful he is.

 In science we say

POWER = FORCE * DISTANCE / TIME. 

If I move a 200 lb weight 10 ft in 10 seconds.   I used 200*10/10  =   200 ft-lb/sec of power

If I move a 200 lb weight 10 ft in   2 seconds    I used 200*10/2    = 1000 ft-lb/sec of power

It took 5 times more power to do it in 2 seconds than when it was done in 10 seconds.

       God can use this to his advantage when talking Creation to Abraham.  While Abraham has absolutely no clue as to how BIG the Universe really is (he may think the world is only a few hundred miles across), or how COMPLEX it is at the atomic scale. He does see how big and varied the world around him is (plants,animals, bugs, etc) and by God reducing the time-frame he plants the idea in Abraham's mind about how POWERFUL God is and what he is capable of doing.  Abraham can compare what he is able to do in 6 days with what God is capable of doing in 6 days and be totally amazed and left in awe.   Yes, later we will discover with telescopes how big the Universe is and we will smash particles together in giant machines and see how complex atoms are and the mathematics of how it all works will blow our minds.  But for now, Abraham is the one God is talking to and he conveys his message to him in a way that Abraham can be amazed.  Note, It is completely possible that God can create the entire Universe in 6 days if he wants, either way we are awe-struck and the how powerful God is whether he is creating a small simple world in 6-days or a vast complex universe billions of light-years across.

  Genesis discovers the "singularity"

    Language is so vital in communication.  How do you describe something when you don't have the words (or knowledge) to back them up?  How does God communicate an incredibly dense, hot point of complete energy like the singularity?   This entity is so mysterious even scientists find it hard to describe it and why it would even suddenly expand is even more miraculous.  I remember being in 3rd grade and pondering the words in Genesis of how God says, "the earth was empty and void" but then a verse later says "the Spirit of the Lord hovered above the waters of the deep".  Wait!  How can water be present and the earth be empty?   I now see that the "waters of the deep" as God's description of the singularity.   Is earth in the singularity?  Yes it is!  I am in there.  You are there.  God calls out of this nothingness our very existence and that first visible event of light itself!  To the early man, such as Abraham, nothing was more mysterious than the depths of the sea and ocean.  Vast, endless and depths beyond comprehension, might be the only vehicle God has to explain this incredibly complex concept.  God often meets us where we are at and uses language and ideas we are familiar with.  Other examples of this in the Bible are when Jesus uses multiple parables to try to articulate the Kingdom of God to us mortals.  He uses, sheep (shepherds would get it), lost coins (woman of his day would get it), pearl of great price (merchants), and hidden treasure in a field (land owners).

   Another fact here often overlooked is just how amazing it is that a man with no education, limited language, no knowledge of science was able to write down a high-level overview of our universes creation and be 100% correct.  How can that be?  For the Christian, we see that it is God's inspired word and is just more evidence that we can trust him.

   Now of course, some skeptics will say that there are other early creation stories out there.  The Egyptians had theirs and so did the Mesopotamian people but none has come as close to what science has determined as the book of Genesis.  All other stories first try to explain God's creation.  Take for example Egyptian myth which has "Ra" ,the sun god, calling himself out of the Nile "because I knew my own name!". He then creates other gods by masturbating and his sperm creates new gods when it hits the ground.  Only the Jewish faith starts with God already there and calling our existence out.  Another big difference too is that in all other myths, man is often created by accident and is held down by god.  In Genesis, man is not an accident, but the crowning jewel of God's creation.  He is special and ....LOVED.

     Does this mean that Science has it all figured out?

     My answer to that question is NO.  So often science was wrong and the Bible was right for many years.  Take for example, that for most of sciences existence, scientists believed in a "static universe" view in which the universe has always been here and it's the same as it always has been.  Even Albert Einstein held this view.  Then along came Hubble who showed us that the universe is expanding and therefore at one time it was all compressed into a small point called the singularity.   The Bible already pointed out this to us in it's first few words, "In the beginning..." and God's first creation of light.   Science had to re-write their books on the Universe and how it got here whereas the Bible did not.

    A second reason I don't accept everything from Science is that they often over simplify things in order to fit their time-table.   For life to get where it is today, you need 2 things:

1. A long series of small (minute) steps caused by mistakes in the DNA
2. A long period of time measured in the billions of years to play out

     For issue #1, the problem is that Life is not a simple process.  As we study the cell more and more we find more and more complexity (something Darwin never could have imagined).  We find molecules inside the cell that act like small motors or robots carrying nutrients and waste to and from the cell membrane.   We see small entities in the cell called mitochondria processing energy for the cell to do its work.   So as we look closer and closer we see that the number of steps needed grows exponentially and the path becomes longer and longer.  Like a person on a long journey who thinks the end is just over the next mountain range, only to find multiple mountain ranges after it looming far into the distance.

     This greatly impacts reason #2, because as you need MORE time to complete the journey your find that you are being given less time to do it.   You have to remember that for Life to exist on earth the clock doesn't really start ticking until earth creates a stable environment for Life to begin.  Just because rocks show the earth to be 5 billion years old does not mean that life can start developing on earth 5 billion years ago.  Other factors must come into being and in a certain order:

1. Earth in a stable orbit with a stable rotation
• Idea of moon coming from an impact of a Mars-size planet disrupts this process
2. Once #1 is done, a stable magneto-sphere can be created
• This is needed to stop the Sun's strong solar-wind from removing the earth's fragile and growing atmoshere
3. Once #2 is done, an atmosphere rich in Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Hydrogen accumulates
4. Once #3 is done, Ozone can now be generated in large enough amounts to accumulate in the upper atmosphere to block the Sun's UV rays which would destroy any early amino-acids that form 
5. Now life can "possibly" start on the earth.

    Without these factors completed in this order, the life process cannot start its journey.  As scientists begin to take these factors into account, they soon realize one hard truth:  They don't have enough time.    All these factors have caused scientists to re-evaluate how life came to be on earth.  As recent as this past decade scientists have introduced a new idea to try to explain it all:  Planet seeding.  Since there is not enough time for life to begin HERE, then it must have started somewhere ELSE and then was transported here by meteorites and comets.  But overlooked is that it would require life to start on a similar planet as ours billions of miles away, find its way here to our planet and be able to survive its new environment.   I question the probability of that as being as near zero as you can get.  Imagine us traveling in a space ship over billions of miles to another planet and landing on it.   Then imagine us leaving our ship, with no protective suits and no special breathing devices to give us our earths atmosphere of oxygen, nitrogen and other elements "hoping" that our new planets atmosphere won't kill us.   What are the chances of that??  Would you take that first step out of the space ship?  I wouldn't.

    So yes, science hasn't and won't figure everything out.  I think God has left his finger prints all over his creation for us to marvel and say "How in the world did this ever come about?".  As we delve deeper into cellular biology and the complexity of life we are shown that life is too complex to just start on its own.  We see a great design must have an even greater designer behind it.

     What about other Christian scientific views such as Apparent-Age skeptics ?   Do they explain things as well?

      I have at one time or another been in some of their camps along the way.  For example, I used to think it was possible that the earth only LOOKED old because when God made the rocks he could make them look old (what they call "apparent age").   But I never really liked this answer.  It would mean that God deceives the scientists into thinking the earth is 5 billion years old.   But I know God does NOT deceive.   It's like a person who takes an piece of furniture and puts varnish on it and dents it to make it "look old" (called antiquing) which is fine as long as you don't sell the furniture as being really old.   For that reason I could not hold the Apparent-Age view anymore.

    So Why does God do it this way?  Why does he create our world and us using natural processes?

    I think the answer here is simple:  he wants us to come to him in FAITH... not FACT.  Imagine if God did make the world in 6 days and the earth was only 10,000 years old.  Every rock we tested would show a 10,000 year old earth.   There would be NO dinosaurs.    Our universe would be only 10,000 light-years across (about 1/10 the size of the Milky Way).   Everything would line up.   There would not be enough time for evolution to occur.    There would be no scientific explanation for our being here and so the ONLY answer would be what God says in Genesis.  But that would mean I would be compelled by facts to believe in God and not faith.   I would even go to say that faith wouldn't be needed at all and we would have no choice to believe or not believe in God.

    But God doesn't want fact-based-zombies worshiping him.   He wants believers who will worship him in "Spirit and in Truth".   He has reasons for doing things the way he does them.  The problem is that we too often don't spend the time with him to ask him "why?".  We don't delve into his purpose and his plan to see that he really does have one.  God knew from the beginning that we would develop amazing radio-telescopes and see how huge this world is.

    He knew we would discover how cells divide and grow.  He knew we would discover how cells carry with them the information to create a whole new being inside of them.  He knew we could create electron-microscopes and would discover the DNA structure and how it carries life-data from eons ago inside it.

 God knew we would dig into the earth and find fossils of long extinct creatures.  God knew we would discover radioactive isotopes that would enable us to test the age of rocks and minerals and see how old the earth really is.

    All of these discoveries would only bring MORE glory to him as it would show how even greater and powerful he is if we only have faith that he is there.  But like the idol worshipers of ancient times, we worship what is created (science,math,physics,biology,etc) rather than the creator.  We glory in our "discoveries" rather than in the one who designed it in the first place.   Like art-critics who painstakingly analyzes a great painting and studies every brush stroke and after writing their critique of the work turns around and glories more in his own critique rather than in the genius who created the painting in the first place.

    But God knew this would happen too....

Does Science have all the Answers

    Finally, science must come to realize that for all their research and all their analysis and formulation of laws, theories and ideas, it cannot determine the answer to the most important question of "WHY?".   They can determine the HOW but never the WHY.  Take for example, Einsteins highly complex General Relativity Field Equation (note the equation below is "short-hand notation" and the actual equations are extremely complicated):

     Einstein might formulate the Law of General Relativity, but why the universe has that law in the first place cannot be determined.  Could the universe possible run on a completely different set up equations?  Sure.   So why does ours use this equation?   Another issue is the constants used in these equations, such as 'c' which is the speed of light ( 3.00×10⁸ m/s), or G which is the Gravitational constant (6.67408 × 10^-11) can take on all kinds of values.  Our Universe happens to use these values but nothing says it has to be that way.   Research has shown that changing the G value by a factor of 10 our universe would either implode during the Big Bang or fly apart before stars or planets could form.   So why does our Universe has the exact right settings for these constants?  They might theorize that universes pop in and out of existence randomly each with different settings of constants, but they cannot determine why they do so or how those values get assigned.  For these questions science has no plausible answers.

  However, it is the WHY that God answers in the Bible when he says:

For God so LOVED the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall have everlasting life!

   God knew from the very beginning Adam and Eve would sin and he would no longer be able to bless them with eternal life.   He would have to fix the problem of their sin by sending himself... his own Son to come and die and pay for our sins.   In fact God spends most of the Bible dealing with this issue rather than with Creation.

That alone should show to us just how much more important this is to him.

We don't know what we are doing!

   Never before did a verse from the Bible become more clear to me than when I had to deal with a friend suffering from mental illness.  Several years a friend of mine had been rehired to work with us.  We had worked together back in the 90's and he was a genius to work along side. I was excited to work again with him along with 2 other of my friends.  He had left the company and worked away from us for several years and we had lost touch.  We had a benign interview with him (we were required to do it) assuming we knew he would be a great fit for our team (we had worked with him for several years so we had no reason to believe he wouldn't be).  Well after a couple of weeks we realized we had made a mistake.  Our friend was not showing up to work or for meetings.   He would ramble on in emails about nonsensical things and would make odd conversations on the phone.  I finally took it upon myself to go find out what he was up to and went to the apartment he was staying at.   I knew from the moment I walked in that I was in the presence of someone with a mental disorder.  The place looked like something out of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" with papers everywhere and printouts tacked to the wall.   There were pizza boxes and chinese food boxes on the floor and I could tell he was living on Coca-Cola as there were dozens of empty 2-liter bottles of it everywhere on the floor.

   I tried desperately to reach him but he was out of his mind.  I could not reason with him on anything.  He was convinced that he had the answer to all our companies problems if we would just give him a few more weeks.   It was the saddest thing I had ever witnessed in my life.  Here was a good friend of mine who had been a great engineer at one time now reduced to a crazy person who was convinced in his own mind that everyone else had the problems and not him.

   When Jesus hung on the cross, he said to the people who put him there,

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

   He was very much like me trying to reach my lost friend.  In his case, we are very much like my friend.  Our minds are so twisted by our sinful flesh that everything to us is really upside down.   We claim that everyone ELSE (including God himself) has the problems and we are completely right in our beliefs.  God tries to reason with us and help us to see how much we need him to fix our minds and our souls.   We cannot do it on our own.  Like my friend, our minds cannot fix themselves.  They are like broken computer processors that think there are problems everywhere in the PC but the real problem is with the processor.  In our view,  we think we have it all figured out.  We know what is best and what is not.

Adultery?            That's just a new loving relationship being formed to replace a broken one.
Pornography?      That's just self-expression
Lying?                 That's just an alternative form of the truth.
Stealing?             That's just an attempt to reapportion wealth from those who don't need it.
Intoxication?       That's just acceptable form of release from the cares of the world.
Abortion?            That's just fixing a female medical problem.

   This brings to mind another verse in the Bible.

"There is a way that appears to be right,

 but in the end it leads to death."   

-- Proverbs 14:12

Only God's Spirit and Love can bring true healing to our minds.  If only we will let him



POST NOTE: my friend did get help in the end and is doing much better today

General Relativity and God's Law

  In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton developed the first laws of gravity based on his observations.  He hypothesized that all matter has a gravitation "flux" emanating from it outward to other matter and this "flux" was responsible for attracting other matter.  From this he was able to derive his basic Law of Gravitational Attraction

   Of course Newton could not prove the existence of this invisible flux but based on planetary motion and other experiments it all seemed to fit.   Newton's laws were also based on some basic fundamental foundations that seemed to make sense to the scientists of his time.  The first assumption is that all space can be described in a simple 3D (height,width,depth) Cartesian coordinate system and all observers would measure the same distances no matter their orientation or movement.  Second, all observers would measure the same amount of time to pass regardless of their location or movement.

   Both of these basic assumption all seemed to make sense.  Why wouldn't we all measure distances the same and all of our watches run the same?  No one could see a reason why not, and so for over 350 years those assumptions were never challenged.   That was until Albert Einstein came along.  His observations of light bending around the Sun revealed that Newton was not 100% correct in his assumptions.


   Therefore, because Newton's basic requirement was wrong, all the laws of motion, momentum , energy etc. all had to be re-evaluated leading to Einsteins greatest achievement: The General Laws of Relativity.   This paper showed that gravity is not some mysterious invisible "flux" but instead a bending of space-time by mass which causes objects moving in a straight-line to appear to be moving in a curved line to us.  Like marbles rolling on a large stretched sheet of rubber that has been indented by a large heavy bowling ball they appear to be changing their trajectory because of the curved rubber, but they are trying to stay on a straight line that has been changed by the bowling ball.

  
    So what is that to me?

    We are often like Newton and the scientists of his time.  We have basic assumptions of up,down,left,right and that all our watches are the same.  It all makes basic sense to us.  How we see the world and how we THINK it should work are not always correct.  For some of our decisions, like Newton's Law on Gravity, it works fine.  Newton wasn't 100% wrong but he wasn't 100% right either.  His law was "good enough" to get us to the moon and back but if we used it to get to a nearby star we would miss it by a billion or so miles.   We also, spiritually think we have it all figured out.  We know what is best and what is not.   Adultery?  That's just a new loving relationship being formed.    Pornography?  That's just extreme art.  Lying?  That's just an alternative form of the truth.   Stealing? That's just an individuals attempt to reapportion wealth from those who don't need it as much.

   But that is not how God sees it.   Like Newton thinking the world coordinate-system is all straight lines, what matters is how the universe sees the coordinate system.  So also, how we THINK the world should work and how God sees it are different, but in the end what matters is how God sees it and not you.

  Let's take sex outside of marriage for example.   To our "enlightened" world sex before marriage is perfectly okay.   We have been taught to not hold back our urges and that it is filling our basic needs for physical contact with other human beings.   Movies and TV shows promote endless examples of men and women having no-holds-barred sex and no-strings-attached either (just close the door when you leave!).  But now studies show that men who later decide to "settle down" cannot seem to "attach" themselves emotionally to their mate.  It's like the "glue" has all dried up in the bottle.  Could it be that we have gone against what God had designed us for?   Could it be that he knows how we operate?   Even when some try to have-their-cake-and-eat-too by living together it doesn't seem to workout.  Study after study shows that those who live together before marriage are 30% more likely to get divorced later.  Much of this is because while living-together, the men do not fully develop into men of substance.   They keep their childish ways (going out with the boys, watching porn, playing video games etc...) and those ways become more ingrained in their way of life.  So when it comes time to marry, those ways are "expected" to be put away to help in being a spouse and father, but now it's even harder to adjust because all those attitudes were thought to be acceptable to the other are now deemed unacceptable.

    God is not some irrational angry being.  He has reasons for his law and when we take the time to try to see things from HIS perspective we see that he is right.  Like Einstein seeing that space is really curved and not straight like how our brains feel it "should be" so also, we wee that God's law is really how things should be and not our interpretation.

All STATES Matter!

    If you want to piss someone off simply tell them: "You don't matter!"   Instantly you will have a fight on your hands.  We saw this when the whole "Black Lives Matter" movement came out and was met with "All Lives Matter" as a response.  Later this was followed with "Blue Lives Matter".  We all want to MATTER.  We all want to be heard and listened to and our needs met.

    The purpose of the Electoral College is very simple: To preserve the UNION.  We are the the United STATES of America and not the United Peoples of America.  That is really what is at issue here.   The states elect the President and not the PEOPLE.   The States created the Federal Government by coming together and writing the Constitution and ratifying it in their state legislatures back in 1791.   Our Constitution is about preserving our UNION of STATES pure and simple.  Our founding father recognized that not all our states are the same.   Some are more rural and some are more urban in nature.  They each have unique needs and wants that need to be balanced.   They saw the growth of the urban states.  They knew that the urban states would have a majority vote over the rural states without any care of their needs.  If left unchecked, this would eventually lead to civil war and a dissolving of our union.  In a sense, it's purpose to say to the Federal government: ALL STATES MATTER!

    To illustrate this, imagine family of five: a mother, a father, two boys and girl.  Imagine that to make decisions in the family they use a purely democratic system of voting.   It is a true statement that women have unique needs and wants that are many times different from that of men.   Let's say in our hypothetical family,  they want to decide where to go on vacation.  The males may want to go camping and fishing whereas the females may want to go to the city and see museums.   In their democratic system, the males would always out vote the females and get their way.   Year after year the women would be subjected to camping outdoors and smelly fish.  Other decisions as well during the year would not go their way.  Where they eat, what they do, what movies they see, what TV shows they watch etc would all be ruled by the men because they are in the MAJORITY.   Our Founding Fathers referred to this as the "tyranny of the majority".   The majority isn't always right and shouldn't always get their way.    In our family example, it would be better for the sake of harmony (and to prevent divorce) that the men give up their majority rights and do what the women in the family want to do.    It too is about preserving the UNION.  The union of the family in this case.

    Our country is much like this family in that the majority is not always right. All voices, like those of the rural states need to be listened to as much as those of the large urban communities.   Just like the men in the our family example aren't always right and it wouldn't hurt them to go to the city and see some museums from time to time.  So also, our country needs to listen to the right and do things their way from time to time.   It's all about preserving our UNION of STATES so we don't resort to separation because a large group of states no longer matters anymore.   Just look at the state of California.   While they are talking about seceding from the union (over an election), at the same time several northern counties in their own state are talking about seceding from the state of California to become their own state because they no longer matter either.

Dopamine addiction is real

   Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter compound in the brain.  It is the brain's "feel good" compound that gives us our natural "high" when something good happens to us.   It re-enforces our desire to repeat an action or activity that we perceive as good for us.   We don't often think about what internally drives us to do the things we do.   We like to think we give money to various charities because we are inherently "good people" but how much of it is from our own brains internal desire to get another shot of dopamine?

   We look down our noses at drug addicts for their weakness to turn away from dangerous chemicals but when it gets down to it, in some sense we are all drug addicts.  Dopamine is such a strong chemical that few of us can say no to its lure.   What is worse, we don't even know that we are addicted to it.   No needle needs to be injected.  No pill swallowed.   No bottle to drink.   Nothing needs to be snorted, or inhaled.   It's always available.  It's always in store and ready to be consumed.  All that is needed is the proper stimulus to activate it and the list of activators is almost endless:

• Shopping
• Exercising
• Skydiving 
• Mountain climbing
• Tricks on skateboards
• Racing cars
• Riding motorcycles
• Getting good grades at school
• Getting promotions at work
• Eating
• Sugars
• Carbs
• Doing charity work
• Social media
• submitting pictures to Instagram
• posting on Facebook
• tweeting on Twitter
• blogging on YouTube
• Cleaning the house
• Organizing
• etc. etc. etc.

   Dopamine is important.  It's what allows us to get good at various activities.  Let's face it.  We all have to start somewhere and usually it's at the bottom.  In order to get better at anything we need to repeat it over and over again.   But unless there is some internal "reward system" it's very difficult to find the energy to repeat a process.   Small rewards act as that reward system and encourage us to try again and again.

   The school system has long been the biggest source of dopamine pushers.  From little on, we were given bright GOLD STARS on our little works of art or assignments to reward us for our effort.   Seeing those gold stars on our paper would give us our first push of dopamine into our little 5 year old brains and BAM!! We were hooked.  We would do anything to get another one of those gold stars or see our name listed on a bulletin board for high achievement or honors.   Even if he we ourselves were not the recipient of the reward it would many times flow down to us as well.   I can still remember seeing my brother Jim who was 4 years older than me graduate from high school with a gold cord hanging over his shoulders for "Honor Roll".   I was going to be a freshmen the next year and thought to myself "If Jim can be Honor Roll then I know I can be too!"  I put a plan into place the next year to prove I could do it (before I was just a A/B student).   Four years later I walked down the aisle with the same gold cord over my shoulders and surpassing my brother with a 4.0 (he only had a 3.93).  That was probably my biggest push of dopamine I had ever experienced.

    Dopamine rules the world.  It's what drives us to build bigger, faster, stronger, cheaper, better.  It drives businessmen to expand their businesses.  It drives the wealthy to become wealthier.  It drives the Philanthropist to give away even more.  It drives the worker to work even harder.  It drives the athlete to play harder and practice more.  It drives the actor to take on more challenging roles.  It drives the musician to go on the road and perform on stage in front of thousands.

   But it also has it's downside as not every dopamine activator is beneficial over the long term.  Take for example the most common activator today:  Social Media.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pintrest are all built around a common theme.  Feedback.   Whether it's a re-post, re-tweet, a "like" or a comment, it all serves the same purpose: to give the user a dopamine shot.  How many of us post a comment or picture on Facebook and await our friends replies and comments.  We sit there anxiously waiting for their hopefully "positive" replies.   We might even hold off on a post in the evening because we know most of our friends might be asleep and not see it.   Like the old philosophical question goes: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sounds?  So likewise, if I make a great post and no one sees it, does it matter?   I think we are not so much interested in changing the world as we are in getting our little daily/hourly/minute injection of dopamine.  If we are so lucky to have a comment go viral or at least go into the double/triple digits we may be high for the rest of the day or week as we achieved a new level of gold stars.  Also, heaven forbid, if we get a "negative comment" we become like a heroin addict who must fight back against those are threatening to take away their drugs.   We unleash on these poor bastards all the furry of hell who dare to challenge our view and our source of self-pleasure and self-worth.

   Another problem I think social-media has also had on our world is that it allows people to escape from the problems in their life.   Remember the list of things I said dopamine drives us to do?   Build bigger, faster ... work harder?  What if I am already getting all the dopamine I need through social-media?   What if my life is full enough by getting re-tweeted or "liked"?   Do I need to work hard at work?   Do I need to get promoted?   Do I need to hear praise from my boss or co-worker?  Maybe not.   Some people have labelled Millennials as "lazy".   I really don't think that is the case at all.   I think that, for many, they are getting their dopamine from social-media and so their brain's need for more dopamine is all tapped out.  At the same time, social-media can serve as surrogate supplier in bad times as well.  For example, in previous generations if you didn't get a great review from your boss you would work hard to fix it the next year to get a better review (a gold star).  But today, many can retreat their their other world of social media to pump them up and restore their lost dopamine supply.   The problem with this alternate source of dopamine, however, is that it's not a longer term supplier of what we need as a society.  Tweets or Posts, for the most of us, are not going to pay for a house, raise a family or provide a retirement income.  Escapism, whether with drugs, alcohol or social media, never works out in the end.

   As with any drug, it's the misuse of the drug that leads to problems rather than the what the drug is trying to do.   Pain killers, for example, are meant to dampen the pain receptors.  In the right context they allow the body to relax and the area that is causing the pain (maybe post surgery stitches) to heal. The problem becomes when the person only feels normal when they are taking the pain medicine and do other terrible things to fill that addition such as: lying to doctors, embezzlement, robbery and even murder. Likewise, dopamine addiction too causes the user to do things that are harmful to them or others.   The skydiver must take riskier jumps.   The sugar addict becomes obese.  The work addict ignores their family needs.   The social-media addict spends much of their time re-checking their account to check for responses and thinking of better ways to increase their positive feedback.  The texting addict drives with their knees on the steering wheel or with one hand firmly on the phone and their vision down and away from the on coming traffic unaware they have slowly drifted into the opposite lane. In all of these cases dopamine addiction was the root cause for their destruction.

   So next time you post another Facebook comment or tweet another snarky comment on Twitter, or sending another funny text message to a friend, maybe you should first ask yourself this:

Am I a dopamine addict?

Fear and the invisible dog fence

     My wife and I were on a walk one day about a year ago and as we walked by a house a large dog came running over barking loudly at us.  He stopped just short of the road and scared the crap out of us.   The lady of the house was outside and yelled "Don't worry he won't go out of the yard! He thinks he will get shocked!"   And of course he dog did stay in the yard.  She came over and talked to us and told us that they had used an invisible dog fence with a shock collar for several months and now they don't need to use it at all because he has been conditioned to stay in the yard.

     Humans are not much different from dogs when it comes to fear.  All be it, we are a little more sophisticated than our canine counterparts but still we fear pain just as much as they do.  Maybe even a little bit more.  Anybody who has either been an older brother or had an older brother knows the sheer terror that younger brothers live under.   They are told, "Don't go in the basement there's a monster down there!"  or "Don't go into the creepy barn!" or  Don't wander in the back woods there's a man with an ax out there!" etc..   For me, I had a fear of clowns (something about that creepy clown on Captain Kangaroo that I hated).  My brother found this out and he would hide this picture we had of a clown in various conspicuous places like: my bed, or my closet  and wait for the fireworks to go off.   Big brothers love doing that.  It's part of the pecking order and keeping little brothers in their place.

    But even as adults, people still use fear as invisible dog fences to keep us under their control.   Take for example, the lefts use of racism.  Racism has been cried out as the reason for everything wrong in this country from law enforcement, to the deficit, to why ISIS rose to power, to why Trump got elected President (last I saw Hillary and Trump are both white so I just don't get that last one).   Now liberals on college campuses are asking for Safe-Spaces for black students to live in separate from whites.   Uh.... isn't that segregation all over again?   Oddly enough that is exactly how segregation started in the US back in the early 1900's.   President Wilson segregated the military (they were not before him) and also all government agencies including the Post Office.  When asked why he did this he told a reporter that "It's for their own safety and also for efficiency as they work better among their own kind".   Sound familiar?   Sounds to me Wilson (a democrat) was arguing for Safe-Spaces in government as well.  Today there is less racism than ever before.   We no longer have segregated schools, businesses or sports.  We no longer see signs for "Whites Only",  We have black judges, black generals, black actors and actresses.  We have even elected a black person to the highest position in the land.   But still the call of RACISM! RACISM! is heard regularly on the news.    To me, this is done for 2 purpose.  The first is to keep blacks from leaving the Democrat Party.   Telling them constantly that the others in the world hate them and are out to get them can be a very powerful tool.   The other reason is that it has the power to control those outside the fence as well.  Like a fence that reads "DANGER: ELECTRIFIED FENCE"  we stay clear and don't go near.  In the past when Republicans have tried to engage the black communities out come the racism rants telling them that they are bigots and racists and to stay away.

    Fear can also be used by those on the right as well.  The GOP uses the fear of having our drug laws or social-morality weakened to keep it's members in line.   Those who think about leaving the GOP to become Libertarians are mocked and made fun of (Just watch how John Stossel is treated on "The O'Reilly Factor").   The drug war is a favorite fear monger issue often used to keep the GOP sheep from straying into Libertarian pastures.  "Do you want heroin sold at Walmart?  That's what you are going to get if you vote Libertarian!".   Fear can also be leveraged by religiously inclined political people in the GOP.   If gay marriage is allowed, to many of them, God will smite the US and take away our good economy and let us be destroyed (trust me God has enough on us already to take us down without gay-marriage on the list).   Fear drives people that listen to them to run to their phones and computers to contact their representatives in Washington DC to prevent such a calamity from occurring (and also send a nice $100 check to the group asking them to "Stand up for God!").

    Like that dog that never tests to see if the fence is still ON, we never risk seeing if what we are being told is factual or not.   I have written before that the PC (political correctness) police have toy guns for weapons.   They are not real, but so few people stand up to them and make them defend their positions that they get away with it constantly.   Politicians for years have done nothing to address the error in political correctness and by not doing so have surrendered to these idiots and let them control the language and ideas that can be discussed.

    That was until Donald Trump came around.  Many have said his campaign was "unconventional".  That is just the medias way of saying "He took on the PC police".  He showed that he could say whatever he wanted and however he wanted and people would still vote for him.   All the other politicians were convinced that your messaging must be filtered through a think-tank of like-minded politically correct 21 year-old women first before you could speak it.   Trump proved them wrong.  He showed them that many in America hate Political Correctness.   We wanted REAL, not FAKE, speeches.   We wanted Political Correctness ended.  It has been the Apartheid of the human psyche in our country of most of the last 30 years and Trump showed us that the fence no longer worked.   It was dead.

    I think it's going to be a long 4 years for liberals.   I hope Trump takes a blow-torch their "Temple of Political Correctness" and leaves nothing but a pile ash behind.   Maybe then we can go back to talking plainly to each other once again and stop living in constant fear of each other.

God's Economy

   If you think this is a blog about Capitalism (or any other ism for that matter) then think again.   Instead I wrote this blog in response to something I have heard various people over the years use as a reason to hold them back from faith in Jesus.  It is the idea of God punishing people who from a worldly vantage point seem pretty decent and do a lot of good in the world.  To them, these people should not be damned.  God should make some allowances for them, given their "good lives and good works".  After all, why should God damn them and not others, just because they believe in Jesus.

    This is really nothing new.   King David lamented about a similar issue as well but from a different point of view.  He lamented that he knew he had sinned (he had committed adultery and killer her husband to boot!), and that NOTHING he could give back to God was adequate. In his words, "all the bulls on a thousand hills are all yours!".   Meaning, even if I sacrifice 1000 bulls to you, those bulls were all created by God and therefore worthless in payment.   It's like being in debt to a bank and then taking out a loan from said bank to pay back the same bank.  It's totally futile.

    But what about those "good people" and their "good works" ?  Surely that must account of something! Right?

    To explain how good works don't matter, imagine you work for a company and you as an employee make a vital mistake that costs the company $100,000.   You fear losing your job and so you go to the boss and tell him you want to make up for the loss any way you can.  He looks at you and says, "Okay! Here is what you are going to do!".  He points over to the sign near the entryway that reads "All Employees must work from 8am-5pm Mon-Friday" and tells you "Instead of working from 8-5 you will work from 6am to 6pm every day for 1 year with NO extra pay for those extra 20 hours per week you put in".  You thank him profusely for not firing you and allowing you to work off the lost money.

    But in God's world things are different. God created us to be perfect.  He says, "Be Holy for I the Lord your God am Holy!".   His employment sign simply reads: "Be Perfect".  Now the problem becomes that there is absolutely no way to go beyond PERFECT.  It's absolute.  So even if I do SOME good works, those are things I am supposed to do anyway, and I am supposed to do them ALL the time as well.   So how can I put in any extra "overtime" good works?   The simple answer is this: I can't!

    So if everything thing in the world is God's in the first place and I am required to be perfect, clearly this debt cannot be paid from a worldly point of view.  It must therefore be paid from out of GOD's OWN POCKET.

   That is what God did.  As we celebrate Christmas this year let's remember that Jesus came to pay that debt I created and had no way to pay back.

The Joke is on US!

    The cartoonist Walt Kelly once said in his famous comic strip Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us".  The cartoon was with regard to pollution and it was posted on the first Earth Day event. He captured the essence of the problem in a way no one else could and the phrase has been used by many others (including me here) over the past decades.
   
    Watching the debate the other night and listening to people discuss how this election has reached an all time new low has been another eye-opening experience for me.   I have talked to people on both sides and both feel betrayed by their parties in allowing people like Trump and Hillary to be their party's nominee.   But I often reply back saying it's not Trump's or Hillary's fault.  The fault is with us!   We put them there.   We elected them.  Trump and Hillary represent what we (or at least MOST) the American people have become.  We have become two-faced autocrats that care little (if nothing at all) about the rule of law or our Constitution.  We have treated politics like some sort of blood-sport like Football or UFC fighting. My team vs. Your Team.  Winner take all.

   Hillary represents the cynical side of America.   Politics is a joke.  The law is a joke.  All that matters is winning.  We can talk about the American Dream and our "Love of Country" all the while we mean something entirely different inside.  Words are just words.   They can be made to say one thing but mean something entirely different.   To Hillary, the truth doesn't matter.   As Pilat said to Jesus, "What is TRUTH?" so also the truth to Hillary is whatever she can con you into believing to keep you on her side.   If she can con you into thinking that 3rd trimester abortions (abortions that occur in the 7th,8th or even 9th month) are not bloody and not painful to the baby they so be it.  If she can con you into thinking she only had Yoga classes and wedding plans on her email server then so be it. If she can con you into thinking that she is for the middle-class when she gets millions of dollars from Wall Street banks and Saudi princes, then so be it.

   Trump represents the Anyone-But-Hillary crowd.  He is the other side of the same coin.   He too is "connected" and he has "name recognition" like Hillary, but  Trump represents those in America who only care about appearances (which is most of us).  He is the product of Reality-TV,  Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.   He represents us: vapid, self-righteous, fake and easily distracted.  Interested in only scoring points (or "likes" and "re-tweets") but not in winning hearts and minds.

   Trump and Hillary are reflections of who we have become in America.  They didn't pop out of a laboratory somewhere like Frankenstein's monster.  No.  They took their cues from us the American people.  Like a child learning to talk and taking it's language and ideas from their parents, so also Trump and Hillary learned their behavior from us.   Most of America doesn't care about hearing the truth so they don't bother telling us the truth.  Most of America doesn't care about the law, so they don't care about the law.   Most of America doesn't care about the Constitution so they don't care about the Constitution.  Most of America is vapid, fake and heartless so they become vapid, fake and heartless.  Most of America is godless so they are godless.

    Lament all you want about your choices this election but know you had a part in creating them.  They both truly do represent us the American people.

   What is funny, is that we laugh at them when Saturday Night Live comedians satirize them and poke fun at them .   It's all great fun watching Alec Baldwin squint and push out his lower lip to try to resemble Donald.  But the joke is really on us because the real buffoons are not the candidates up on the debate stage.  Instead it's us, the American people.

   We have met the enemy and they is us.
 

Let the Barbarians come in

   When I was a junior at the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana in 1984 I took a course called "Roman Achievement" and it was taught by a Professor Scanlan.  He was an incredible teacher and even though it was taught in a large auditorium of over 2000 there was still a waiting list to get into the class.   He covered the entire 700 year history of the Roman Empire from its early beginnings to the fall in the 5th century.    I was amazed at how similar their culture was to ours.  Their buildings, there culture, their education, their sports and arts and even their politics and military.   I never missed a class the entire semester.   Towards the end of the semester he began to cover the fall of the Roman Empire.  How the barbarians of the north had disguised themselves and pretended to be Roman citizens and soldiers in the military.   I remember him talking about the final collapse and how within a 100 years much of Romes knowledge was gone completely.  I remember leaving the class and walking down the Quad lined with buildings that looked like they were from the Roman Empire and wondered to myself "Why God?  Why did you have to let it collapse?".   I thought of how much more advanced we would be today if we did not go through a 1000 years of darkness.

    The question of "Why?" haunted me for many years.   It seemed so pointless to lose all this knowledge and culture.   Even more so, when you realize that near the end of the Roman Empire, Rome had turned from a pagan culture to a Christian culture.    Even its very emperors became Christian ( Constantine was the first ).   So why should God allow it to collapse now?   Shouldn't God have been MORE pleased with where it was going culturally? By most evangelicals today in our country, God should have been so pleased with Rome he should have been showering them with more peace and prosperity than ever before.   But just the opposite was about to happen.

     The answer would not come to me for many years.   Just recently as I was writing a blog about how God used the Roman Empire to spread the Gospel.  He used the Roman highways to allow missionaries to travel.  He used Greek language to allow them to talk to countless cultures across the Mediterranean.  He used Roman coin to pay for these missions and help build churches across the region.   He used the Roman military to provide a time of peace to the region it had never seen before.    All these things the Jews despised were useful to God and his plan to save the world.   It was at that moment I realized, God had maximized his mission to the Roman Empire and it was now time to reach beyond Rome and into the barbarian countries.   These people were not going to be receptive to the Gospel as long as Rome was fighting with them and enslaving them.   God needed to let the barbarians IN so now they can hear the Gospel for themselves.   And hear it they did.   They turned from their pagan myths to Jesus Christ.   They became believers and were baptized.

   In short, for God to win the barbarian's souls, Rome had to lose.

   And that is what God always wants to accomplish.   I don't think God cares about Global Economics or National boundaries.  He has a completely different agenda: saving souls.   In the end, all nations will be thrown down.  In the end, all the money of the earth will be burned up and lost.  In the end, all the knowledge of the universe will be forgotten.  In the end all that will matter will be whether your name is in the Book of Life or not.

   Today, like Rome, the barbarians are at the door.   This time they are not northern Germanic tribes wielding large swords and axes but instead are members of ISIS seeking our destruction.   But along with them are many people caught in pain and suffering of being Islamic who are in need of hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   I don't often agree with President Obama, but on a recent occasion I did.   He was giving a speech about how to confront Islamic terrorism and he offered his opinion that we need to provide a "better alternative to Islamic extremism".   Of course he was referring to high paying jobs and better opportunities for them.    I say, Christianity offers the ONLY solution for them and it is so much better than what they have right now.   The problem for us right now is that so many of these countries where they live don't allow missionaries to preach to them and our efforts are thwarted.  So our only way to reach them is for them to come here inside our country.

    Does this strike fear into my heart?   Some.   Will some of these people from the Middle-East be terrorists?   Probably.   But if God can save more people isn't that what I should want too?   I hurt for the ISIS followers.  I pray for their souls and that God can somehow reach them.   Imagine the passion a former ISIS follower turned Christian would bring to the Church!   St. Paul you might say was an early anti-Christian terrorist.   In Acts it says he went from town to town rounding up all those who were believers and brought them back to Jerusalem to stand trial.   He called himself "a man of anger and a violent man".   But God was able to re-channel that misplaced passion to be used for good.    If God can do it for Paul, how many  ISIS-Paul's are out there today he can use as well?

    This is why God calls for his children to "pray for those who persecute you" because he wants them to come to the truth as well.  It's not just for you!  It's for them as well!   All too often we fall victim to the Jonah-reaction.   Jonah saw 10 out of 12 tribes of Israel taken away by the Assyrians never to be heard from again.   Jonah HATED the Assyrians and the last people he wanted to receive God's grace and forgiveness was them.   That is why he fled on a ship to the west rather than go east as he was told to.   Even after God sent a violent storm and Jonah admits to the sailors that he is at fault, he still doesn't want to go.  Instead of asking for God to forgive him and send him back to Assyria he tells the sailors to "bind me hand and foot and throw me overboard".   He essentially is telling them "drown me!". (side note: a Jewish myth was that the sea was bottomless and that "maybe" a person might be out of God's reach for judgment day).   God has the last laugh and sends him to Assyria anyway and Jonah sends God's message to them and they repent (Jonah spending 3 days in a fish was probably bleached head to toe and was a hard preacher to ignore).    God accepts their repentance and spares them.   When Jonah in anger tells God "This is why I didn't want to go because I knew you would forgive them!" God smacks Jonah on the side of the head when he says "Don't you know there are over 10,000 who don't know their left from their right in Nineveh alone (that means little children) ?".   God doesn't want to destroy them.  He wants to save them.

    We too must not become like Jonah and let our hatred get in the way of God's love and forgiveness.  God wants to save the ISIS followers too.   He wants to save the Islamic people too.

    He wants to save ALL people.