Christian Theology
The Father of Lies
I was watching a movie last night. The movie was called "The Usual Suspects" and although it was not a Christian movie by any means, it had a profound statement within it. One of the characters said "The greatest trick Satan ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist".
I never thought about it like that, but it is so true. Even though Satan is the ruler of this world and a very real enemy, most people scoff at the idea of his existence. Our enemy is the father of lies, he masquerades as an angel of light and he relentlessly hunts us.
A casual observance of society will tell us that most people don't think Satan is an actual entity. In fact, a lot of Christians don't believe Satan is a literal being. The Bible, however, is very clear on this. Ezekiel details his creation and fall. Job tells us of his conversations with God. Revelation gives us the hope of his ultimate defeat. And throughout the Bible we are warned of the threat this enemy poses to us.
It is truly amazing how someone with such great power and authority over humanity is scoffed at and laughed upon. He is sneaky, conniving and seeking to devour us all - yet has pulled the wool over the eyes of the world.
Fallen World
This image was sent to me recently in an e-mail. It is the 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken by Kevin Carter. The photograph shows a famine stricken Sudanese child trying to reach food. Behind her is a vulture waiting for her to die so it can feed upon her.
Kevin Carter, a South Africa photojournalist, committed suicide two months after receiving the Pulitzer Prize. His long time friend, Judith Matloff, stated that Carter would often return from upsetting assignments with bouts of crying, drinking, or using drugs. She says that after he shot his Pulitzer Prize winning photo, he "sat under a tree and cried and chain-smoked" - he couldn't distance himself from the horror he saw. No one knows what happened to the girl in the picture.
In his suicide note he stated that he was haunted by the vivid memories of killings, corpses, anger, pain, starving and wounded children and trigger-happy madmen.
This world is fallen. All of us suffer. But if you are reading this you have it far better than most. Right now, half the world (about 3 billion people) lives on less than two dollars a day. Because of poverty, over 30,000 children die every day. Every year 2.2 million children die because they are not immunized and 15 millions children are orphaned because of HIV/AIDS.
It's easy to live in our comfortable lives, detached from the rest of the world; most of us don't want to fully realize how much suffering is really occurring in the world. They say ignorance is bliss but who benefits from it? Nobody.
I struggle with empathy and pray often for more of it. I pray that I will be more selfless, not consumed with this world and what it has offer me. It is only temporary and moving past me at an enormous rate. There are many people suffering, many people who have not heard about their Savior, Jesus Christ. We should always be motivated to spread the good news to the fallen world.
Tick Tock Goes the Clock
As my thirty-seventh celebration is quickly approaching I've seen a trend in my life. It seems that after I turned thirty-five I have been developing a fascination, possible borderline obsession with time and aging.
We've all heard it said countless times before, "time goes by so fast", or, "where has the time gone". As I, and I presume everyone else, gets older - time does seem to escape me. I look back on events with my friends and family and it feels like it wasn't that long ago before realizing it's been a decade or more since that happened.
It's something we certainly have no control over. Time continues to march faithfully on, never missing a beat. My nieces, whom are already teenagers preparing to drive have gotten to this point way too fast. So much has changed in so little time and the perceived rate of the flow of time is only going to continue to exponentially accelerate.
People look older - I look older. It's amazing how we change so quickly with the ravages of time. It can be a depressing topic, luckily we have hope. The Fountain of Youth - Jesus Christ. Through his death, burial and resurrection, He has prepared a way for us and our loved ones to have eternal life. A never-ending life with perfected bodies.
If it weren't for the hope of our adoption into the Kingdom of Heaven I would have no hope at all. We have no control over time - it is constantly pulling us toward our inescapable meeting with our Maker. Whether you live another hundred years our another hundred heartbeats, that meeting will be here before you know it. Thankfully we do have control over our future and where we choose to spend eternity.
Entropy and Sin
Entropy is the measure of disorder or chaos in a system. The second law of thermodynamics describe how all closed systems (those without more energy being applied to them) tend to return to a state of chaos. We see it all around us, are cars rust, paint fades, beaches erode. Even the sun will burn out some day and the planets and galaxies are moving slower each day.
The only way to overcome entropy is to apply energy to the system. Small amounts of entropy can be over come by working at it - we can clean our homes, wash our vehicles, brush our teeth - but eventually even we wear down and return to the earth. From dust to dust.
When I look around creation I see the evidence of the fall of man. For God said to Adam after he ate the forbidden fruit:
..."Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Genesis 2:17-19
God did not originally intend for His to creation to be in a state of decay:
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Romans 8:20-21
The fall of Adam caused God to place the whole creation into a state of decay (entropy). Although this is sad, we should take great joy in knowing that Jesus prepared the way for us to overcome death. Through Jesus Christ we can overcome second law of thermodynamics that governs the entire creation.
We should find hope in knowing that this world is only temporary:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."
Revelation 21:1-5
Praise God that although we are living in a world subjected to death because of sin, we know that our home is with our Creator in the new creation that will be as He intended it to be in the beginning.
True Love (Agape)
" For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
John 3:16
John 3:16 is probably the most well known verse in the Bible. It's certainly one of the first verses I came to know. However, only recently has it's true meaning started impact me. This verse is not a casual statement. God loves all of us so much that He performed the most humble acts of humility ever.
God, the creator of the cosmos, the Almighty Father of all that is, became a man and let Himself be mocked, ridiculed and then killed. He did this to pay the penalty for our disobedience. While we were still sinners God stepped in and paid our penalty for us -- with the blood of His own Son. This was His choice --knowing the pain the He would have to endure to prepare a way to save us -- He gave His life for ours. This is true love, agape love.
God did what?
When I think about God's creation I am totally awestruck. Sometimes reality even seems surreal to me. I can remember times when I was a small child and suddenly everything and everybody around me became dream-like. It was as if nothing was real -- almost like an out of body experience.
Now I relate those experiences to the awesomeness of God's creation. If I think about it, it just doesn't seem possible. How can something come from nothing? A universe that we can see billions of light-years in every direction and still not see an end? Countless stars, galaxies and other creations beyond comprehension? How could it be? Certainly not be accident!
However, the most amazing creation is our own bodies. From my layman's perspective, the human body is the most magnificently creation that I have witnessed. What a feat of divine engineering it is to create a spark of life that grows into an adult with capabilities of creation in it's own right that are beyond comparison. Have you really thought about what a computer does?
The human body is like a container for our soul. It is fine tuned to experience, interact with and appreciate the physical realm -- earth. Are bodies are not only our earthsuits, they are truly connected with the earth. No new matter is created to makeup our bodies, it is all derived from the food we eat, or the food our mothers ate while we were still in her womb. And we continually need air, water and more food to support our bodies in all of its magnificent functions.
It is mind boggling to just think of the steps your body needs to take just to stop the blood from flowing from a cut. Not to mention sight, hearing, sensations of touch, smelling, thinking, memories, dreams, mental feelings (sadness, joy, anger) , self-awareness and body controlled functions healing, blinking, breathing --just to name of few.
All of this capability just in the human body, not to mention the rest of the creation but not only do people still believe in evolution -- it is being taught in our schools as fact! But the fact that seals the deal for me is that not just one body were created but two. Male and female. Without both the human race would have stopped with Adam. It's a far stretch of the imagination to think that one human (or any life) could develop out of nothing -- but a male and a female, fine tuned to work in harmony with each other. Yeah right!
Praise be to God --our Father --our Creator. This is Your creation from the finest, minute detail, to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Your work is awesome --You are awesome!
Can you teleport a soul?
Quantum Mechanics has always fascinated me -- that is, what little of it my mind can comprehend. I was recently looking through Wikipedia on various Quantum Mechanic topics and came across an entry for Quantum Teleportation. It is an interesting theory about being able to teleport the state of particles into other particles at another location.
In essence, you would then have an exact copy of something in another location. Not the original, but an exact, atom for atom, replica. I then wondered about teleporting a person this way, purely hypothetical of course.
If you could take every particle that makes up your body and teleport their states into 'blank' particles in another location you would have your complete physical body, brain, synapses' and all, in that new location. Would your soul follow it?
I don't think so. I believe that our soul is what separates us from all other species.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Our soul is what makes us self-aware. It's what drives us to do the things that make us human -- because we know we exist. And it is our soul that is outside of our body -- connected somehow in a divinely miraculous way!
By changing the state of the physical building blocks of a person in another location you would make no connection to the essence of what makes that them human. Would it work with life that does not have a soul? Could you teleport your dog this way? Maybe. What do you thing?