Tuesday, May 22, 2007

"Do You Want to Get Well?"

What a stupid question!

Back up 15 minutes ...

There was a place in Isreal which was legendary for healing. It was a public pool, probably originally a decorative area, or maybe a place where the poor could come to cool off on a hot day. But after years it was no longer used for that purpose. It seems that this place had a reputation for healing miracles. Legend had it that if you sat there long enough, the normally calm waters would get a ripple, or maybe a splash, and that was supposedly because an angel touched the water. At that point, the first person in the pool was healed of whatever illness they had. Either it must have worked, or maybe the people hanging around were so desperate that they would try anything.

Any way, there was a man, a quadraplegic, who had been there for thirty-eight years (St. John 5:1-14). He must have seen some people healed, otherwise I cannot imagine that he would have stayed there that long. As a matter of fact, he does claim that other people have gotten in ahead of him (v. 7) and they must have been healed, or he would have gone home (at least I would have if I had been him).

It is into this situation that Jesus walks. He looks at the man and asks him that question, "Do you want to get well?" I find it interesting that instead of saying, "What are you, nuts? Of course I do!" the man tries to explain why he hasn't been able to ... "some one always jumps in ahead of me." (So, get a patio chair and go sit in the shallow end ... don't get out of the pool!)

(Hint to the man who had been sitting there for thirty-eight years, you are talking to the Guy who sends the angels to splash in the pool!)

Jesus by-passes the pool and just tells him to get up and walk. And he does. No splashing in the pool, no going for a swim, no big ceremony. Just a simple "pack up and go" (OK, "Pick up your mat and walk.") And he was healed.

What about us? Do we want to get well? Well from what? The simple answer is sin. Do we want to be healed from our sin? Oh, not just the "God saved me and washed away my sin, and now I'm going to Heaven" sin, but what about the daily sin that we commit? Do I really want to be healed of the sin of ignoring God six and a half days a week, and playing Christian on Sunday morning? Do I really want to be healed of the sin of ignoring other people and thinking myself to be the most important person in the world? Do I really want to be healed of the sin of treating God like a cosmic Santa Claus, and constantly pestering Him with my petty wants? Do I really want to be healed of the sin of not falling on my face in worship and treating Him like the Creator of the universe that He is?

There is a part of us that says, "oh, yeah, I guess I could do that, if I want," but can we really? I'm sure that every time the man saw the water splash, he thought, "maybe this time." But, it didn't happen. He was too far gone, he lost the ability to move the inches to get into the pool. Had Jesus not come by, he probably would have been there until he died. We are also too far gone. Sin has robbed us of the will or the drive or whatever you want to call it that would "put us in the pool".

"I could do that if I wanted to," but the not-wanting-to is part of the disease of sin. Even if we could start, we could not keep it up. The life of the Spirit cannot be lived in the power of the flesh. That means that if you have to force yourself to do the right thing, go to church, give an offering, be nice to people even when they're a pain, etc., then you will come to the end of your rope and quit. It might be tomorrow, next week, or a year from now, but at some point you will say, "to heck with it! It's not worth it!"

Like the man at the pool, we need Jesus to heal us.

Buz

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Theo Crazy

I had someone tell me tonight that he would rather live in a theocracy than in a democracy ... bad idea. Don't get me wrong, as I have very openly admited, I am a very committed Christian.

The thing is that if it were a true theocracy, I mean where God had a prophet as His spokesperson, and would do things like part rivers, send rain on a clear day, and raise the dead to prove that this person had the right to speak for Him. And if the person were found to be speaking for himself rather than for God, would be covered in leporous boils, then sure, I would have no problem living in that theocracy.

I trust God. If you look at the Old Testament in the Bible (the books from Genesis to Malachi which were written before the the birth of Jesus), and go into the laws, there were a lot of petty little laws, like don't wear cloths made out of cotton and wool, which were specifically for the Israelites. But there were other laws, like the Ten Commandments, which were applicable to everyone living within the borders, and to visitors. Things like don't commit murder, don't commit perjury, etc. And, God said that all those laws applied equally to people in the land. So, if you were an Israelite, you couldn't kill your neighbor, who was a Moabite, and get away with it.

So, why wouldn't I support a theocracy? Well because in all practical terms, it would not be a theocracy, it would be a Samocracy or a Barbocracy. The person who could yell the loudest and claim that he had a word from God would tell everyone else what to do, and if you questioned them, obviously you would be a blasphemer and thrown in jail or executed, or if you had enough backers, we could start a schism and have a holy war until we cleansed the earth of all the Barbocrats.

Personally, I am a child of the King and a part of the army of God, not the army of Sam, Barb, or whoever has the pulpit this week.

Buz

Monday, May 14, 2007

Teaching Creation?

(Well, if anyone reads this post, this will probably prompt a response.)

For decades there has been an ongoing debate as to whether the presentation of Creation, as given in the first three chapters of Genesis, should be taught in science class. The proponents claim that with all the holes in the Theory of Evolution (capitalized for a reason), that Creation is at least as valid as the ToE. The opponents claim that there is nothing scientific or valid about the story of Creation, it is just an ancient myth.

The problem seems to be a misunderstanding, on both sides, as to what "science" actually is. Science is NOT the answer to everything. Science is a logical methodology of organizing observations, facts, and calculations to present a POSSIBLE reason as to the events that occur and how they occur. And, in simple cases, why they occur.

Should creation be taught in science class? No. Here is the reason why. Imagine it is 300 BC, and you are in Greece, sitting on a hill watching a storm at a distance. You can see the dark clouds, and above them you can see the sun shining. At one point, you see lightning strike a tree and start it on fire. You did not see Zeus (Jupiter) or Hephaestus (Vulcan) throwning the lightning bolt, so being a curious person, you wonder where the lightning came from, you start thinking. You remember that once you saw heavy dew in a spider's web create a very shiney pattern on an old, dry evergreen branch, and in a few minutes, it burst into fire. Somehow, the water transformed the sunlight into fire. You begin to put two and two together, the sun was above the clouds, the clouds somehow contained water (that is where the rain came from) ... perhaps the water in the clouds somehow transformed the sunlight into fire. You run to tell someone of your thoughts. "Hey, stupid, we have lightning at night, too, when Apollo has put the sun in his stable ... besides we already KNOW what causes lightning, Zeus." And you are quickly stoned as a heretic.

The problem with teaching any religious-based idea in a science class is that:

..(1) it cannot be tested because:
......(a) you cannot put God in a test tube, and
......(b) you may be burned at the stake for even
............suggesting that it SHOULD be tested, and
..(2) you always run the risk of alienating or
........ostracizing those who disagree.

If you whole-heartedly agree with those statements then listen very closely because that exact thing is happening right now ... to those who disagree with the Theory of Evolution. Those who disagree are having papers rejected from publication and have been threatened with having their degrees revoked. (Not all religions meet in a church and sing hymns ... some meet in college classrooms and sing the praises of Charles Darwin. The Theory of Evolution has become a foundational pillar of the religion of Scientism. Hence, the capitalization ... it is the one of the new Commandments,)

So, should educators totally ignore the story of Creation, or, indeed, the entire bible. No. What should be taught at the beginning of science class is what science is and what it is not. Science can tell us that a fertilized chicken egg will hatch in about 21 days. But it can't tell us the exact difference between a chicken that is alive and one that has been dead for a few seconds. (Oh, it can tell some basic things, like this one is breathing and that one is not.) Science can tell us that our DNA is over 90% the same as that of our fellow primates, but not why we even bother to study their DNA and they don't bother to study ours.

In science we have observations, facts, and calculations. These are our building blocks ... the "bricks" of the scientific structure. We also have ideas; they are our mortar. The ideas turn the observations, facts, and calculations into theories. Theories are structures of science. The problem is that if we are building, and there is a hole in our theory, the only thing that science can fill it with is a "brick". There is no "not-brick" in science.

That is where philosophy and religion come in. They have "not-bricks". The scientific definition of truth is "that which can be proved". The philosophical or relgious definition of truth is "that which is true". There are things which are true which cannot be proved. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know the speed of a particle and its location at the same time. The basis of this is that in measuring something, the very fact that you are measuring it alters the thing you are measurning. For example, a pitcher throws a ball and you clock it with a radar gun. Before you turn the radar gun on, the ball was going 90.0000000002 miles/hour. When the energy from the radar gun hits the ball, it causes it to slow down, ever so slightly to 90.0000000001 miles/hour. So what, you could never measure it to that great a degree, so it does not make a difference. Perhaps, but the principle is there. I cannot PROVE that the ball was travelling at 90.0000000002 miles/hour because my attempt to measure the speed affected the speed. BUT, that does not mean that, in TRUTH, the ball was going at 90.0000000002 miles/hour. Therefore, not all truth can be proved.

Science can tell us that we are here, and MAYBE, how we got here, but there are no "bricks" to tell us why. There are no observations, no calculations, no facts to say we are here because. Some people mistakenly believe that because science does not have the answer, that means that there is no answer. That is like saying because I cannot smell colors, colors do not exist, or because I cannot see thunder, there is no such thing as thunder, or like trying to use sandpaper to drive nails into a board. It is expecting the wrong type of answers from science.

So, am I a heretic? Actually, I strongly believe in Creation, from a philosophical point of view. I do not understand how the things we seem to observe, a universe which seems to be 15+ billion years old, dinosaur fossils which appear to be 100+ million years old, etc. can be reconciled with an account which, if I understand it correctly, states that the universe that we know was created in seven days about 6000 years ago.

This will sound very unscientific and closed minded, but I believe God, and if what science has found does not reconcile with what I believe He has said, then one of three things must be true: (1) I do not correctly understand what God said, (2) science has made a mistake, or (3) they are both true, but my mind is too simple to understand the greater principles which unite them.

In conclusion, the simple answer is "no Creation should not be taught in science class." And if that is all you take away from this monologue, then you have completely missed the point.

Buz