Calvin and Hobbes: making sense of life?

Thanks to BW

What is God doing in your life? Only God knows.

DA Carson

Recently at the Gospel Coalition blog, Don Carson was asked to respond to the question that I personally am asked most often when listeners are trying to process in their own minds the depth of Gospel love, viz., that there is nothing we can do that will make God love us more or love us less (Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace).  Here's the question: How do we know if God is disciplining us?

Professor Carson, as one might expect, gives a sensitive, wise and astute response that is definitely worth one's time in reading and reflecting upon.  One section however, stood out as being of particular pastoral help.

 "...in any suffering, or in any other event for that matter, God is doubtless doing many things, perhaps thousands of things, millions of things, even if we can only detect two or three or a handful. A godly woman in her middle years is diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. What is God doing? My little brain can imagine several possibilities. At one level, he may be providentially allowing the effluents of the Fall to take their course, a constant reminder that it is appointed to all of us to die, and then face judgment (Heb 9). He may be preparing her for eternity: it is a great grace to know when you are going to die, and prepare for it. He may be shocking her 20-something son, who is living his life indifferent to the gospel, to prod him into self-examination and repentance. He may use her testimony about the joy of the Lord even in the midst of suffering to call another of her children into vocational ministry. He may be using her as a way to teach people in her church what it looks like to "die well," anticipating several other deaths in the next two years. He may be teaching her minister-husband to slow down and care about his family, and in principle other people, instead of being endlessly busy with "the ministry." He may be sparing her from living long enough to witness the moral destruction of her daughter. Her funeral may be the means by which several of her unconverted relatives, for whom she has been praying, will come to faith — conversions for which she would happily give her life. Perhaps one of those converts will become a Christian pastor of rare gift whose ministry of proclamation will touch thousands. Perhaps she is hiding some deep bitterness and hate in her life, and God is using this means to confront her.
"I've barely started a list of possible things God may be doing, and I have a small brain. What does the omniscient God think he is doing? In other words, sometimes we have to cover our mouths and confess, in faith, that we cannot possibly grasp all that God is doing when someone suffers. So why should we think in antithetical terms about how God must be doing this but not that, when in reality he may be doing this and that and that, and that and. . . ? But he is trustworthy; we know that, for he sent his Son to suffer on our behalf."  

Discipleship: mapping the faithfulness of God in our lives

1 They have greatly oppressed me from my youth—
    let Israel say—
2 they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,
    but they have not gained the victory over me.
3 Plowmen have plowed my back
    and made their furrows long.
4 But the Lord is righteous;
    he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.
Psalm 129: 1-4 (NIV 1984)

Commenting upon this psalm, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson writes:

"The cornerstone sentence of Psalm 129 is, 'The Lord is righteous', meaning not merely that He is always right (which he is and this, of course, is what the Bible assumes), but that he is always in right relation to us...

"That 'The Lord is righteous' is the reason that Christians can look back over a long life, crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions - look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing and make a song of what we see. 'Sorely have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me (v 2: RSV).  God sticks to His relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it.  

"The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment that God makes to us.  Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God's faithfulness.  We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous.  Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms.  It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance."

A Long Obedience in the Right Direction (Marshall-Pickering: London, 1989), p 128-9.  Slightly edited for brevity and clarity.
HT: Tullian

The search for God-particle and the search for God

Happy Higgs-Boson Day!

On this momentous day when scientists at CERN have announced the discovery of a subatomic particle consistent with the Higgs boson particle that gives matter mass, do read this article by Professor Alister McGrath, Christian theologian and apologist, and trained molecular biophysicist, written for the Daily Telegraph at the end of 2011 about the parallels between the search for so-called 'God-particle' and the search for God Himself.  The fact that Alister is from 'Norn Iron' is a bit of a bonus ...

In 1994, Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman came up with a nickname for the Higgs boson – the mysterious particle proposed by physicist Peter Higgs back in the 1960s to explain the origin of mass. Journalists loved the name – "the God particle" – which probably explains the huge media interest recently in the work of the Large Hadron Collider. Most scientists hated it, considering it misleading and simplistic. Maybe so. But it certainly got people talking about physics.

And maybe it’s not such a bad nickname after all. Lederman invented the name the "God particle” because it was “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” Nobody had seen it back in 1994. And they’re still not sure whether they’ve really seen it today. Yet this isn’t seen as a massive problem. The idea seemed to make so much sense of things that the existence of the “God particle” has come to be taken for granted. It has become, I would say, a “particle of faith”. The observations themselves didn’t prove the existence of the Higgs boson. Rather, the idea of the Higgs boson explained observations so well that those in the know came to believe it really existed. One day, technology might be good enough to allow it to be actually observed. But we don’t need to wait until then before we start believing in it.

Some tell us that science is about what can be proved. The wise tell us it is really about offering the best explanations of what we see, realising that these explanations often cannot be proved, and may sometimes lie beyond proof. Science often proposes the existence of invisible (and often undetectable) entities – such as dark matter – to explain what can be seen. The reason why the Higgs boson is taken so seriously in science is not because its existence has been proved, but because it makes so much sense of observations that its existence seems assured. In other words, its power to explain is seen as an indicator of its truth.

There’s an obvious and important parallel with the way religious believers think about God. While some demand proof that God exists, most see this as unrealistic. Believers argue that the existence of God gives the best framework for making sense of the world. God is like a lens, which brings things into clearer focus. As the Harvard psychologist William James pointed out years ago, religious faith is about inferring “the existence of an unseen order” in which the “riddles of the natural order” can be explained.

There’s more to God than making sense of things. But for religious believers, it’s a great start.

Diamond Jubilee: celebrating a 'tragic splendour' (CS Lewis)

Tony Reinke has been reading CS Lewis's appraisal of the Queen's coronation back in June 1953. Lewis, it seems, chose not to attend the festivities because the weather was not great (like Sunday past on the Thames, long to rain over us!), because he did not like crowds, and because he was not in the mood to dress up. Instead he stayed at home and watched the event on TV (it was the first fully televised coronation).

A month later Lewis reflected on the coronation in a letter to a friend (Letters, 3:343):  

You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) — awe — pity — pathos — mystery.

Queen' Elizabeth II's coronation: 2 June 1953

The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said, ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.’

Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendour.

Only Lewis would see the echoes of Eden and eternity. Profound! 

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Gaugin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

 HT: BW
Young Calvin is right.  French post-impressionist painter, Paul Gaugin, did raise these fundamental world-view questions in a famous painting you can view here. As the Wikipedia article (yeah, I know ...) demonstrates, it is important to begin to get young people thinking about these foundational life issues early.
Which brings me nicely to the recent talk I gave at the Reality 3:16 seminar, where we looked at Paul's letter to the Colossians as a plea for the Christians there not to become distracted through faulty self-indulgent spirituality, nor to become monastically introverted by being intimidated or dismissive of the prevailing pluralistic imperial cult.  Instead, they should have confidence in "this [Christ-centred worldview] Gospel" that has already fruitfully impacted their own lives (Col. 1: 4-6) and, following the example of Epaphras and Paul and others (1:7; 4:2-4, 7-14), live wisely - with paradoxical humble boldness - by sharing this message with others (4:5-6). 
 Adapted from some insights from Voddie Baucham, at the heart of the message was an encouragement to see how Paul highlights the glory of the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus Christ (1: 13-21) as the answer to humanity's deepest questions.  This can provide a framework for Gospel Worldview evangelism:

• Who am I?  My identity is intimately bound to my relationship the Creator of all things, Jesus Christ.  My life has significance since I am the crowning glory of the creative activity of God, both bearing God's image and with a capacity to know Him
• Why am I here? My life has purpose and meaning, because God, in His grace, has made me with the intention that I should bring glory to Him.  God has created us that we might experience, delight, spread and ultimately share in the glory of God.
• What's wrong with the world? "I am" (GK Chesterton).  We are alienated from God, enemies with Him through evil behaviour, God-glory denying and defying sinners, who need to be forgiven and rescued from this kingdom of darkness (Col 1).
• How can it be put right?  Not more education, not more governance. Jesus! (Col 1: 13-14, 20, 22)
• How will it all end?  The antithesis of our culture's sense of meaningless and despair is the certain "hope of glory" that is held out for all those who embrace this Gospel of Christ (1: 23, 27).
• What time is it?  It's time to believe and persevere in "this" Gospel (1: 23, 28-29), and make the most of every opportunity to prayerfully and lovingly share this life changing truth with those who hold to a different, and therefore wrong, view of reality (4: 2-6).  

Christian, do you dread death because of the prospect of eternal boredom? Think again...

Here's a quotation from a longish article by Russell Moore, who writes "For too long, we've called unbelievers to 'invite Jesus into your life.' Jesus doesn't want to be in your life. Your life's a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life."

He continues ...

We tend either to ignore the future, because we are so consumed in the drama of the here and now, or to see it as simply a continuation of our present lives, with our loved ones there and sickness and death gone. But in Jesus we see a future that has continuity and discontinuity. In his resurrected life, Jesus has gone before us as a pioneer of the new creation.
Perhaps we dread death less from fear than from boredom, thinking the life to come will be an endless postlude to where the action really happens. This is betrayed in how we speak about the "afterlife": it happens after we've lived our lives. The kingdom, then, is like a high-school reunion in which middle-aged people stand around and remember the "good old days." But Jesus doesn't promise an "afterlife." He promises us life—and that everlasting. Your eternity is no more about looking back to this span of time than your life now is about reflecting on kindergarten. The moment you burst through the mud above your grave, you will begin an exciting new mission—one you couldn't comprehend if someone told you. And those things that seem so important now—whether you're attractive or wealthy or famous or cancer-free—will be utterly irrelevant.

With many thanks to Dane Ortlund, you can read the whole article here.

Sherlock Holmes and the curious case of the search for meaning

Benedict Cumberpatch:  BBC's Sherlock

In his recent book of published lectures, Surprised by Meaning, renowned theologian and academic (and Northern Irish born) Alister McGrath, unexpectedly begins by highlighting our cultural obsession with detective fiction.  Dorothy L Sayers' explanation for this was humanity's "deep yearnings to make sense of what seem to be an unrelated series of events".  The detective novel, says McGrath, appeals to our implicit belief in the intrinsic rationality of the world around us and to our longing and ability to discover its deeper patterns.

The point of this?  "We long to make sense of things. We yearn to see the big picture, to know the greater story, of which our story is but a small but nonetheless important part.  We rightly discern the need to organise our lives around some controlling framework or narrative.  The world around us seems to be studded with clues to a greater vision of life." (p.2-3)

But in our present age, confronted with a growing deluge of diverse and incoherent information, it is tempting to believe that grasping a universal 'meaning', if one is there at all, will be beyond us.  For many, to live in such a world considered 'meaningless' is unbearable.  Without meaning, life is pointless.
For others, including such vocal partisans as Richard Dawkins, science, which it is claimed alone offers the best answers to the meaning of life, tells us that there is no deeper meaning or significance to the universe, having "no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference" (River Out of Eden).
So, in our relentless search for 'meaning' for life, the universe and everything, where may such meaning and purpose be found?  McGrath answers, like CS Lewis's hidden door into Narnia, there is a new way of understanding, of living, of hoping:  faith.  Not an irrational blind leap into the dark, but a God-given and God-sustained vision which enables us to see what others cannot, to see what is really there.

"Faith is about seeing things what others have missed, and grasping their deeper significance (see Mark 8: 22-25; 10:46-45)...Faith does not contradict reason, but transcends it through a joyous deliverance from the cold and austere limits of human reason and logic.  We are surprised and delighted by a meaning of life that we couldn't figure out for ourselves.  But once we've seen it, everything else makes sense and fits into place. The framework of faith, once grasped, gives us a new way of seeing the world, and making sense of our place in the greater scheme of things... 

"[Re Psalm 23] The Christian tradition speaks of God as our companion and healer, one who makes sense of the puzzles and enigmas of life.  The world may seem like the shadowlands; yet God is our light, who illuminates our paths as we travel." (p.6-7)

'The Greatness and Miserableness of Man'

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father's heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him.In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8).

Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can he found only in God.

Herman Bavinck, 'Our Reasonable Faith', Baker Book House. 1956. Pages 22-23.
HT:  IIIM Ministries