But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."
Luke 2:10-11 (NIV)
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Quote of the Day
"About 1340 Petrarch climbed a mountain, Mount Ventoux, in the south of France just to climb it -- something new."
- Francis Schaeffer in his book "How Should We Then Live"
Is God Blowing Bubbles?
H.G. Wells wrote an intriguing story entitled "The Island of Dr. Moreau". In it, Dr. Moreau is a scientist whose desire is to create human beings out of animals. On a small island in the middle of the Pacific, he experiments on one animal after another, each time trying to make something that is a little more human. He performs surgery on the creatures to change their appearance and mannerisms to become somewhat human like, then teaches them to speak and therefore think as humans. However, his experiments go terribly wrong as the Beast Men, as his creatures are called, revert back to their animal ways and end up being the cause of his death and destruction.
The story is narrated by Prendick, a man who, through various circumstances, becomes stranded on the island with Moreau, Moreau's assistant Montgomery, and the Beast Men. It is through his eyes that we see the tale of unfold. At first he knows nothing of what is occurring on the island, but he soon learns and finds he has no choice but to trust Moreau, even though he is repulsed by what Moreau is doing. Wells painted Dr. Moreau as being the "god" of his island. Dr. Moreau creates the beings that populate the island in "his" image, gives them laws to live by, and punishes them when they fail to follow those laws. After Moreau is killed by one of his creatures, the other Beast Men see that he is dead, but in order to maintain order Prendick informs them that he is not really dead, but has merely changed his shape for a time. He tells them, "'For a time you will not see him. He is...there'--I pointed upward--'where he can watch you. You cannot see him. But he can see you. Fear the Law.'" Is this not the very thing that we are taught about our own God? That he is "up there" somewhere and is watching us, so we should fear him and obey his law? The "god" Moreau even has a priest to preach his rules to the Beast Men. There is a certain gray-haired Beast Man that is known as the "Sayer of the Law". This law gives a list of things that they should not do, such as crawl on all fours, suck up drink as animals, or eat flesh or fish. It also includes sayings about Moreau, their creator, such as "His is the Hand that makes," "His is the Hand that wounds," "His is the Hand that heals," "His is the lightning-flash," "His is the deep salt sea," and "His are the stars in the sky." If this is not the description of a god, I don't know what is.
However, this god that Wells created has no room in his heart for love or mercy. He cares nothing for his creatures' pain. He creates them in pain to live out a life of agony as he forces them to follow laws that directly go against their innate animal desires. They have strong urges to follow their animal desires, and yet are bound by the laws he gave them to make them more human, like him. Everything Dr. Moreau does is merely to satisfy himself and his own whims and curiosity, with no real reason behind what he is doing. Prendick makes the observation that once the creatures were created in the laboratory, suffering through intense pain during that process, their tortures didn't end there as they were released to live on the island and made to continue in a life of agony. "Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence began in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau--and for what?" H.G. Wells seems to be trying to make an analogy of our own existence. We are created by God in his image, we have sinful human desires but are given a moral law that is meant to restrict those desires and make us more like God and to live more in conformity to his nature. Wells' idea seems to be that God created us merely to make us suffer through our lives following this law as Dr. Moreau did his Beast Men--for no real reason. Is our existence really as pitiful as Moreau's Beast Men? Why did he create us in the first place? Does God really care for us?
Montgomery, one of the characters in Wells' book, asks, "Are we bubbles blown by a baby?" This seems to be the very question that H. G. Wells is putting to the reader: "Is the god who made us merely playing with us? An infantile creature who could care less about the bubbles that he creates and then pops, merely to satisfy his own whim?"
The story is narrated by Prendick, a man who, through various circumstances, becomes stranded on the island with Moreau, Moreau's assistant Montgomery, and the Beast Men. It is through his eyes that we see the tale of unfold. At first he knows nothing of what is occurring on the island, but he soon learns and finds he has no choice but to trust Moreau, even though he is repulsed by what Moreau is doing. Wells painted Dr. Moreau as being the "god" of his island. Dr. Moreau creates the beings that populate the island in "his" image, gives them laws to live by, and punishes them when they fail to follow those laws. After Moreau is killed by one of his creatures, the other Beast Men see that he is dead, but in order to maintain order Prendick informs them that he is not really dead, but has merely changed his shape for a time. He tells them, "'For a time you will not see him. He is...there'--I pointed upward--'where he can watch you. You cannot see him. But he can see you. Fear the Law.'" Is this not the very thing that we are taught about our own God? That he is "up there" somewhere and is watching us, so we should fear him and obey his law? The "god" Moreau even has a priest to preach his rules to the Beast Men. There is a certain gray-haired Beast Man that is known as the "Sayer of the Law". This law gives a list of things that they should not do, such as crawl on all fours, suck up drink as animals, or eat flesh or fish. It also includes sayings about Moreau, their creator, such as "His is the Hand that makes," "His is the Hand that wounds," "His is the Hand that heals," "His is the lightning-flash," "His is the deep salt sea," and "His are the stars in the sky." If this is not the description of a god, I don't know what is.
However, this god that Wells created has no room in his heart for love or mercy. He cares nothing for his creatures' pain. He creates them in pain to live out a life of agony as he forces them to follow laws that directly go against their innate animal desires. They have strong urges to follow their animal desires, and yet are bound by the laws he gave them to make them more human, like him. Everything Dr. Moreau does is merely to satisfy himself and his own whims and curiosity, with no real reason behind what he is doing. Prendick makes the observation that once the creatures were created in the laboratory, suffering through intense pain during that process, their tortures didn't end there as they were released to live on the island and made to continue in a life of agony. "Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence began in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau--and for what?" H.G. Wells seems to be trying to make an analogy of our own existence. We are created by God in his image, we have sinful human desires but are given a moral law that is meant to restrict those desires and make us more like God and to live more in conformity to his nature. Wells' idea seems to be that God created us merely to make us suffer through our lives following this law as Dr. Moreau did his Beast Men--for no real reason. Is our existence really as pitiful as Moreau's Beast Men? Why did he create us in the first place? Does God really care for us?
Montgomery, one of the characters in Wells' book, asks, "Are we bubbles blown by a baby?" This seems to be the very question that H. G. Wells is putting to the reader: "Is the god who made us merely playing with us? An infantile creature who could care less about the bubbles that he creates and then pops, merely to satisfy his own whim?"
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Cause, Effect, or Affect?
The following may not have much coherence or make much sense, but please bear with me. I am thinking "out loud".
I heard a speaker the other night say that, since Jesus has authority over all of history, he caused the bad things that happened, including the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Does God cause bad things, or does he allow them to happen? And if he allows them to happen, does that mean that he is not in complete control? Are the bad things things that God does since he controls everything, or are they the result of the evil in this world and our fallen, sinful human nature? The Bible says that God works things out for the good of those who love Him, but does that mean that he takes the bad situations that we cause and uses them for good, or does that mean that he causes the bad things and still uses them for good? A god that caused bad things to happen to the people he created does not seem like a very loving god, but more like a child with a magnifying glass killing ants on a sidewalk for the fun of it. There are also situations where something that we perceive as being bad at the time ends up being a very good thing when we look back on it, although perhaps not something that is on the same scale as the World Trade Center attack. Are large scale "bad" things viewed differently by God than things that we see as being on a smaller scale, such as loosing a job or a loved one?
Genesis 50:20: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." That is what Joseph said to his brothers after they sold him into slavery and he ended up being able to save all Egypt from being victims of a terrible famine. Did God make the brothers sell Joseph, or did he just use the situation without causing it in the first place? If he made the brothers sell Joseph, doesn't that mean that he didn't allow them free will?
When Job is suffering from intense illness and the loss of his children and all his possessions, his wife comes up to him and tells him to "Curse God and die!" Job replies, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10) In Job's story, God does not cause the bad things that happen to Job, but instead allows the devil to do them to Job, with set limitations. Is this how things really happen? If so, the devil influences people, and not God, to do bad things and God allows them to do those things. However, people still have the ability to make the choices for themselves and have free will and can only be influenced.
God could cause things to happen that influence our decisions by influencing the decisions of others in a very complicated web of influence and decision making. But he would also know what those decisions ended up being in advance since he is beyond the restraints of time. I once heard it said that when we make a choice to follow God, it is like us choosing to open a door and God is on the other side saying "I have chosen you." So does God use our choices, and causes things to happen that make these choices work out the way he wants them in the end?
It is all very confusing...and I think my brain is about to explode. I think it is safe to say that God is much bigger than I am, and it is a good thing that he understands everything, because I definitely don't.
I heard a speaker the other night say that, since Jesus has authority over all of history, he caused the bad things that happened, including the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Does God cause bad things, or does he allow them to happen? And if he allows them to happen, does that mean that he is not in complete control? Are the bad things things that God does since he controls everything, or are they the result of the evil in this world and our fallen, sinful human nature? The Bible says that God works things out for the good of those who love Him, but does that mean that he takes the bad situations that we cause and uses them for good, or does that mean that he causes the bad things and still uses them for good? A god that caused bad things to happen to the people he created does not seem like a very loving god, but more like a child with a magnifying glass killing ants on a sidewalk for the fun of it. There are also situations where something that we perceive as being bad at the time ends up being a very good thing when we look back on it, although perhaps not something that is on the same scale as the World Trade Center attack. Are large scale "bad" things viewed differently by God than things that we see as being on a smaller scale, such as loosing a job or a loved one?
Genesis 50:20: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." That is what Joseph said to his brothers after they sold him into slavery and he ended up being able to save all Egypt from being victims of a terrible famine. Did God make the brothers sell Joseph, or did he just use the situation without causing it in the first place? If he made the brothers sell Joseph, doesn't that mean that he didn't allow them free will?
When Job is suffering from intense illness and the loss of his children and all his possessions, his wife comes up to him and tells him to "Curse God and die!" Job replies, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10) In Job's story, God does not cause the bad things that happen to Job, but instead allows the devil to do them to Job, with set limitations. Is this how things really happen? If so, the devil influences people, and not God, to do bad things and God allows them to do those things. However, people still have the ability to make the choices for themselves and have free will and can only be influenced.
God could cause things to happen that influence our decisions by influencing the decisions of others in a very complicated web of influence and decision making. But he would also know what those decisions ended up being in advance since he is beyond the restraints of time. I once heard it said that when we make a choice to follow God, it is like us choosing to open a door and God is on the other side saying "I have chosen you." So does God use our choices, and causes things to happen that make these choices work out the way he wants them in the end?
It is all very confusing...and I think my brain is about to explode. I think it is safe to say that God is much bigger than I am, and it is a good thing that he understands everything, because I definitely don't.
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