God knows that when you eat of the Tree of Good and Evil your eyes will be opened, and you will be like him.
Genesis 3:5 (ESV)
Everything broke the day we believed this lie.
The insinuation (I use that world quite deliberately) is that we are fit to rule our lives independent of our Maker. We foolishly set ourselves up as heads of state of our little kingdoms of one.
Because God gave us free will, each of us gets to choose our life priorities. He will not impose Himself on us, a requirement of love. God doesn’t want us to be robots.
But because outrageous arrogance and stupidity are in our very DNA — not to mention the fact that we were made for community, for putting others first — we are not fit to be a king. The kicker: If we include the Lord at all in our lives, we try to go about assigning Him a support role.
Think about this! God made the universe and all that is in it. He holds everything together — not just this little ball of dirt and water, but all the planets, stars, galaxies, the “whole show” — with His little finger.
Is this the kind of being you expect to be your assistant to help you reach your life goals? Are you calling on the Holy of Holies to serve you in your little kingdom of one?
Hang with me here. I’m going to point out some things that will seem very elementary. And I’ll point out some things that might seem on their face to be problematic.
Let’s start by level-setting a couple of things about language, regarding both its proper uses as well as where it can go wrong:
First, words are used to point to reality, to what is. While we sometimes miss the mark in our pointing, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do when we use a word: point to what’s really there.
Second, words are not these static things. They have different uses and meanings — varying situational definitions, if you will. For instance, I can know a fact. And I can know a woman.
A good part of our disagreements are simply matters of definition.
Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about truth. Whether we have every really taken very long to think about it, we all know that objective reality exists. A particular rock is either there or it isn’t. We can say that a thing’s being is independent of our knowledge of or about that thing. A child can tell you – and he’d be right in doing so – that a tree that falls in the forest is really there,falling, whether we are on site to observe it.
Final point for now: Everyone knows that while our senses are imperfect and can fool us, it’s not a very common problem if we are reasonably well in body and mind. So I can rightly say that I know this particular rock is hard, white, slightly abrasive, cool to the touch (though I know that that will change when the morning sun hits it), and about four feet from that small tree (now three and a half after I’ve picked it up and put it back down).
Why on God’s green earth am I taking the time to point out such obvious things?
I bring up these obvious things because in our current culture, we often get confused about the word “truth,” seeming to speak sometimes as if we can make a rock or a tree appear or disappear based on whether we want it to exist.
In the next post, we’ll continue our exploration, starting with the idea of preferences.
Brink of the Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park. August 2023.
Knowledge is good, for many reasons. But it is not wisdom. Insight is similar to wisdom. Insight comes from inspiration.
Wisdom is knowing what to do when the right rules aren’t apparent, or perhaps don’t directly or obviously apply.
This book is practical in its instruction. But since the wise know that all men are fools — never forgetting the possibility that they themselves may be the chiefest among them — it is wisest perhaps to remember that we fools by our very nature despise wisdom and instruction.
We’re all in our “terrible twos”: We don’t like being confronted, contradicted, being made to feel powerless, small, like a fool.
However, we must ask God’s power to set these things aside, grow up enough so that we can receive the words of this book, treasure up its commands, make our ears attentive to wisdom, and incline our hearts to understanding.
In part one, I told you that it’s entirely possible to find peace on the roads, that the stress of driving comes down to an animal/biological/physiological response: Fight or Flight.
The question is this: Can we, how do we check out of this game?
First the bad news: Just like everything else Jesus tells us, it’s hard work and requires continual awareness. But freedom is on the other side, folks. It will be worth it.
Let’s talk about fear first.
Fear is an appropriate response to danger. The roads are sometimes dangerous. And yet we’re very clearly told to “fear not.” What this does not mean is that we are to go doing stupid things like jumping off of cliffs. What is does mean is that if you do everything you can to be safe but still cannot avoid a potentially dangerous situation, do not worry, for God is with you.
We have to drive: You gotta go to the store and get food for your family or yourself. You have to go to work to provide for your family or yourself. On vacation, you need to get out of town to see God’s creation, to renew. You need to visit your parents. Etc.
So drive carefully and wisely. Beyond that, do not fear.
Ok, that’s flight. What about fight? What about anger?
I am convinced that as Christians we do not own anger, except in the rarest of situations: righteous anger (e.g. somebody is about to hurt a child and you need to step in to stop it).
Almost all of our anger comes from ugly places. For instance, pride says, “I would never do such a thing!” Truth is, yes you probably would if you were in their shoes, if you had their upbringing, life circumstances, etc.
Let’s talk about a situation you know far too well: Let’s say you’re going to a concert and there’s a very long line to exit the freeway. Somebody in the lane to your left speeds all the way down the line as far as they can, and then pulls into a gap near the front of the line. Infuriating, isn’t it?
It shouldn’t be. You don’t know their life situation overall, and you don’t know what’s going on with them right that moment. You really don’t.
A quick story: Many years ago, my dear wife was in the car rushing my son to a place where he could get medical attention because was having great difficulty breathing. She didn’t have time to get an ambulance. She had to hurry to save his life. Someone, most probably thinking they were going to “show” my dear wife and not let her speed, repeatedly pulled in front of her to prevent her from proceeding at that pace.
Ok, you say, that’s for sure a cautionary tale. But that kind of situation is, like what, one-tenth of a percent of speeders? What about the other 99.9%?
Easy answer, tough to execute: Jesus tells us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” If a person is simply an idiot, I mean really an idiot with little regard for others, they’re not going to repent and change their lives because a stranger is angry with them.
Give up judging aggressive drivers –turn that over to God. Drive wisely and carefully. Get out of people’s way. Swallow your pride and anger*. Admit that you don’t know everything. Pray for those who persecute you. Take comfort in knowing that God’s got it all covered.
*Regardless of how long you’ve been driving, you will almost certainly have a very large amount of built-up anger, fear, frustration, and disappointment. You have to find a way to get that out so that you can find peace! Cry it out, talk it out, whatever it takes. Counselors can help.Identify it and do the work to remove it from your life.
We don’t like being told what to do, even by God himself. We don’t like rules. They are a suffocating blanket. Freedom is what we want.
Are God’s rules suffocating? Is it freedom from Him that we really want?
In Psalm 119:97-99, we are told that God’s commands for us are to be “desired more than gold,” that they are “sweeter than honey.” That they “give [us] more understanding than all of [our] teachers,” “make wise the simple,” “delight the heart,” and “enlighten the eyes.”
Ok, wait a minute. What the psalmist is telling us here seems to strongly conflict with our idea of freedom. What’s going on?
Because we are dull in wisdom and hard of heart, Jesus sums it up for us all in Matthew 22:37:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
So that’s it? All those rules and regulations come down to this? Love God and other people?
Doesn’t sound suffocating to me at all.
Only our broken nature could make a hell of heaven, a bad guy of the source of all goodness. We are called to give up our little kingdoms of one and join the Kingdom of God. He’s the only one who can give us true freedom.
You’re a well-put-together person. You’re kind to strangers, hold the door for the person behind you at the shopping mall entrance, always tip well, and love your spouse and children. People just really like you.
All that changes when you get behind the wheel of an automobile. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
How is it that you can be such an amazing human being off the roads, and then turn into either a) a selfish monster from hell — willing to mow down grandma in order to get a thirty foot advantage over the next car, willing to endanger the lives of a sweet, little family in a minivan just so you can get to your destination four minutes earlier — or b) a quivering ball of cowardly jelly?
Let’s say that early one Saturday morning, you decide you want to surprise your still-sleeping family with breakfast. Happy and hopeful for the day, you jump in the car to take a quick jaunt down to your favorite local donut shop. You don’t get a quarter mile from the house when some bozo in a jacked-up Ford F-350 decides that, of all the open spaces on the quiet streets of your little neighborhood at 6:30am, he likes the space about 48 inches from your rear bumper. Instantly, your mood goes from happy and hopeful to furious or scared. Or both.
Why do you respond this way? Why do we respond that way? The simple answer is that the threat represented by the jerk in the Ford causes an autonomic, physiological, biochemical response called “fight or flight.” Those are the two possible responses to such stress: anger and aggression, or fear and the need to quickly get away.
Fight or flight comprises the great messy stew that are the roads. Somebody cuts you off, you get angry, so you cut the next guy off. Somebody scares you by pulling up on your tail, so you speed up and tailgate the next guy. Next thing you know, you’re either fearfully pulled over to the far lane driving 30 when everyone else is doing 70mph, or you’re the one in the F-350, terrorizing good people.
It seems an inescapable cycle. But it is possible to decide to check out of the game and find peace on the roads. In the next post, I’ll tell you how.
Albrecht Dürer: “Selbstbildnis im Pelzrock”, 1500, Öl auf Holz, 67 × 49 cm, Alte Pinakothek München
To understand Christ, we have to start with the Trinity, which consists of one divine being, God, who is comprised of three distinct persons, each with a unique role: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christology is essentially the study of the person of Jesus Christ, the Son: who he is in relation to the other two persons of the Trinity, his divine and human natures, and his mission to save humanity from its otherwise inescapable fallenness.
In the historic Apostles Creed, we are told of:
Jesus Christ, [God’s] only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and nine months later was born the savior of the world. He lived the life we should have lived, taught us the true nature of God. He was condemned by the rulers of his own people and handed over to a Roman leader named Pilate, who did what was reasonable to try let the man go free. But in the end, Jesus was treated as an exceptional criminal, as a traitor to the Roman republic, and received the horrific punishment of being beaten, scourged, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross to die.
Jesus was given a fairly normal Jewish burial, though in a tomb beyond his family’s ability to pay, but was not given with the standard burial treatment due to it being the Sabbath.1 Three days later, he arose from the dead, the firstfruits of the new kingdom he has initiated and will eventually complete when he returns in glory to judge all people.
Christology, then, consists of making sense of this man, this God, for Jesus was both God and man. He was both one with the Father, equal in power and glory, as well as a man, born of woman and with all the limitations of humanity.
1The women who discovered the empty tomb had come to complete the task of preparing Jesus’ body
Wisdom is a path rather than a door. It’s a left/right/left/right/left rather than a couple of days spent with a self-help book. Here are five practices that will make you wise:
1. Know God: Find ways to pound it into your heart that He is absolutely committed to you. As someone else has said, you would be no more loved and accepted by God if you were to obey for 1,000 years than the day you first believed.
2. Know yourself: Since wisdom requires that one be in touch with reality, wise people know they are broken and foolish. One must be prepared to engage in “ruthless yet non-traumatic self-examination.”
“What I’d like to understand,” said the Ghost, “is what you’re here for, as pleased as Punch, you, a bloody murderer, while I’ve been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigstye all these years.”
“That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no need to bother about it.”
“No need to bother about it? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No. Not as you mean. I do not look at myself. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began.”
C.S Lewis, The Great Divorce
3. Know your friends: The fool is an individualist; a wise person is always asking for help and advice. Wisdom comes through community.
4. Know God’s “best practices”: You’ve got to master, take into your heart, and meditate and reflect on Scripture. Every day of every week of every year.
5. Know trouble: Do not despise or reject suffering.
The cross is the beginning of wisdom. It is upside down to what the world says: you win by losing, rule by serving, obtain wealth by giving it away.
When your day is long And the night, the night is yours alone When you’re sure you’ve had enough Of this life, well hang on Don’t let yourself go ‘Cause everybody cries Everybody hurts sometimes
So hold on.
R.E.M.
Whether you’re having a bad day, going through a bit of a rough patch, or having a bad life, I highly recommend watching R.E.M.’s 2008 Hyde Park performance of “Everybody Hurts” on YouTube. It’s wonderfully delivered and a very moving reminder of our common humanity. It’ll give you some comfort.
Everybody hurts. It’s also true that everybody worships. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Buddhist, a New Ager, Agnostic, or Atheist, something in between or none of the above, if you’re a human being, you will inevitably worship.
Don’t be put off by the word. In this context, worship simply means to have something — a person or idea or philosophy, whatever — in which you place your hope, your identity, your meaning. What we put there often has to do with how deeply we hurt, whether we find ourselves moving towards despair.
At the end of the day, we’ve got two choices in terms of what we worship: the Creator or the created. Put your hope in the latter and you’ll be disappointed every single time. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually you will be let down.
God will never, ever, ever let you down. Build your house on rock, not sand.
