early morning insanity
I have something else to say today. I need to say it, I think. But I’m not so sure how it will be received. Its not a confession really. I already got burned once using this site as a confessional. And I don’t really believe what I am about to write. I know it will sound crazy, it is crazy. But it is weighing on me. I was praying it today as I drove from Farmington to Shiprock. And its wanting to be said.
I finished reading a book today. A silly, science fiction, Star Trek book called Q Squared. Quantum physics, string theory, multiverse vs. universe.
I like Star Trek kind of things. It was a good book for what it was. A story of multiple realities and an all powerful being who was playing with the threads of time. There was this one character, Jack, who unlike all the others only existed in one reality. In all the other realities he had died. And although he didn’t realized it, this state of being alone in the multiverse was affecting his emotional/mental state.
Maybe that is my problem. (No, I don’t really believe this). Maybe in all the other realities I didn’t live this long. Maybe in those other realities I just gave up. Now, I realize that there are not really any other realities (funny sentence that). There were times in the past, in my personal past, when I wanted to give up. But I didn’t. I used to imagine myself sitting in the presence of the Almighty and Him saying to me, “if you just held on a little longer, it would have all turned out ok.” And on the way home yesterday - it is yesterday now (another strange phrase) because it has taken so long to get this written. Anyway, on the way home I prayed “God, how much longer until it turns out ok?”
And it comes back around to the old debate. Is this whole mess God’s divine plan? And another question comes to mind. A question of assurance. I’ve been taught that you can be sure of your salvation. It goes along with the teaching of ‘once saved always saved’. If one can be sure of their salvation, can one then also be sure of their damnation? My daughter-in-law is sure of her damnation. She is convinced that her sin of adultery was part of God’s predestined plan for her life. There is a man who staggers into church every now and then. Usually during Bible studies or prayer groups. And he always asks the same question. “Why am I here? I didn’t ask for this. Why did God make me?” He knows Bible stories and church songs. He’s been down the Roman Road, a few times it sound like. He’s tried the Jesus way. It just doesn’t seem to work for him. He can’t seem to break the hold that alcohol has on him. He can’t seem to escape the darkness. I think he’s been taught somewhere about predestination or Divine election, and in his drunken stupor he realizes he’s one of the many who are predestined for hell. He did not ask for this.
And one more question, can one believe in God, love God, and still be damned? Like Cane, or Esau? Like Judas?
Well now, it’s time for a cup of coffee. Time for me to go out on the porch and wait for the sun to rise. It’s Sunday now. I am so glad it is Sunday.
21 comments:
Honestly, this obsession with heaven versus damnation is boggling to my mind. How often do you worry in your daily life whether you will one day find yourself on death row? I imagine you don't, because you know you would never commit the crimes that would lead you there. So throw Satan into the mix. Is it possible someone could frame you succesfully and end you up there? Maybe an infinitessimal chance, but that doesn't cause you to lose sleep. Trust the judge and be at peace.
yeah, but I still have a hard time with the here and now...
trust the judge and be at peace?
good advice for a Sunday Night, sort of like a song we sang again and again this morning...He's still God so be still and believe...He's still God
I miss my grandson.
Interesting post. I like your question, "can one believe in God, love God, and still be damned? Like Cane, or Esau? Like Judas?"
I think the key is love. The demons believe in God, and in their fear of him, they tremble. But they do not love him. By my estimation, the evidence is there Judas truly did not love Christ. He loved profit. He loved self. God was not at the center of his life as evidence of a transformed mind.
We who love him are marked by our obedience. And if not obedience, at the very least, our desire to be obedient--even if we are not successful. And nobody is completely successful. As Wanderer said, God will just justly. Plus, you have the Holy spirit as your Paraklete (sometimes translated advocate or counselor) here on Earth. And in the End, Christ will also stand by your side as your advocate.
Regards,
Rich
BlogRodent
Okay. Here is another thing I never understood. Why is Judas painted in such a negative light? Is it not a tenet of your believe that Christ had to be betrayed and put to death to pay for your sins? That this was the divine plan? Shouldn't this make Judas one of the most revered of the disciples, having fulfilled the plan rather than trying to fight it as the others did? What would make you think God would condemn the agent that was required to play this role? If someone was destined to do it, doesn't condemnation of that someone go back to your concerns regarding someone being predestined to be damned? It seems foolish to me. I always thought (even before I saw the movie) that it was most likely something akin to what you find in The Last Temptation of Christ, that in fact Judas did love him, and did what he was asked.
Considering his role in the most significant event in your religious history, I would suspect Judas would be almost certain to enjoy paradise, not to be damned.
boy, wanderer, that last statement about judas should raise a few eyebrows...
It has the few times I have brought it up in the past. It also has raised more than a few voices. The fact that I don't understand the mindset isn't to say that I don't realize I anger a number of people when I say it. Still, can you point to any reason why we should assume that Judas did wrong?
Great post! I happen to agree with rich tatum...love is the answer. And I think the Wanderer has a good point too. Why should it anger people? To me, only God knew Judas' heart at the time of his death and only God will judge him.
I also believe noone is predestined for hell. Jesus died for us ALL and it is our choice whether to accept Him or not. Sin is sin--no matter what it was...He will forgive anyone if only they would ask.
Wanderer, good, thoughtful questions, and they should be asked if only to force the less thoughtful among us to think more deeply about our faith and the language we use to describe it.
Issues about predestination, God's omniscience, his omnipotence, his omnibenevolence, and so on, are all attempts to harmonize what is known about this fallen world with what we believe or theorize about the eternal world. Usually these issues all get dealt with in various theodicies attempting to explain why evil exists at all. And no theodicy will ever completely satisfy because we have an unbalanced equation here. We have on the one hand, our experiences, which confront us with evil, sin, failure, waste, hunger, death, disease, catastrophe, chaos, and so on. On the other side of the equation we have God's eternal qualities.
How can a pure and omni-whatever God allow this equation to remain unbalanced? How can we speak of a plan or predestination when the planner and predestinator is thought to be the agent in what ultimately turns out to be evil? Aren't we then forced to say that the holy and just and loving God therefore causes evil?
But I submit that the equation is unbalanced simply because we cannot see the whole picture--and we fumble the math. You and I and the rest of us here do not have the necessary faculties to comprehend everything.
When we speak of a God who does comprehend everything, who existed before time, who created time, who sees and knows everything that has happened and could happen and will happen as though it already did happen--well, our language fails us. So we speak of a plan.
God doesn't need to plan the way we do. Seriously, think about it. We experience time as it unfolds, sequentially, event by momentous event. We only remember the past, that imperfectly. We don't even fully experience the present, and when we do remember the past--even moments ago--we invariably inject our imagination into the memory. And as for the future, fugeddaboutit. Our plans are at best wishes. Dreams. Hopes.
God's plans are completed action: Fait Accompli.
If time were an object like a yardstick, we would be the creatures crawling along it moment by moment. Never seeing what's ahead, barely remembering what was behind.
But God created that yardstick and exists, therefore outside it. God is not bound by time. He is not forced to imagine the future as a complex set of "if-then" possibilities. He doesn't need to experience events sequentially he created it and sees it all--why would he need to limit himself? (Note, we do say that he did limit himself and experience it through Christ, when he lowered himself and became immanent within our narrow slice of reality.)
If you were to look down at a yardstick and decide you wanted to intervene in the way the critters crawling along it experienced the event, and you wanted to modify the shape and contour of the yardstick, you could stick your thumb down here, here, and maybe here. Nudge a critter here, stop one there. Flatten a few up there. It's his yardstick. We're his critters. He is all-powerful.
We call it a plan. We call it predestination. God doesn't have to call it anything. He just is.
As to whether Judas is therefore a hero or a saint ... if we return to my (possibly flawed) yardstick analogy, when deciding when and where to intervene in history as we know it, you could easily choose to allow those who are clearly identified as defective to accomplish your will. There's no reason for a loving God to force a creature that serves him and loves him to do evil. But can God allow and permit one who already has evil in his heart to fulfill God's purposes?
Absolutely.
Regards,
Rich.
BlogRodent
there was a glorious full moon setting over my friendly mountian this morning and as usual i am in a rush to get ready. today will be an especially busy day, gotta leave school early to go pay bills so that i can get back to school to attend an important staff meeting and i start a class myself this afternoon after which i will go to worship/dance...anyway, i just wanted to say thanks for your comments. i do hope all my regular readers (ha ha, i have regular readers) read Rich's comment. I'll have to read it a few times over when i'm not in such a rush (need to leave in 15 minutes). Sounds real good to me. Less emotional about the subjec than i usually am, which is probably good.by the way...those of you who pray for me, us, please say an extra one today that my son Arthur finds a job real soon...there are some extenduating circumstances that make him having a job NOW and finding a job EVER a serious stressor. Thanks
MaryEllen - Just for the sake of being obonoxious, that moon wasn't actually full as it set at about 6:31 this morning. Close enough for government work, but it isn't full over your hometown until about 5:58pm today. :)
In the grand scheme of things, I know the above is irrelevant. The relevant factor is that it was undoubtedly a beautiful sight, and a wonderful way to start one's day. I hope the day went well.
Pastor Art - I basically agree with your position of God existing outside of the concept of time, thus seeing it all panaramicly. The two of you illustrated this concept very well. The question then becomes, does God interact with us? Obviously at times he does. By your demonstration, though, he only does so once. Since he is outside of time, omnipresent and omnipotent, then everything he does happens at the same time. Or the same focal absence of time. The creation, all assistance, all condemnation. Heaven and hell and their entirety of existence. All within God, outside of time. This makes all deity interaction with the entirety of the world a "flash in the pan" If time isn't passing while things happen, it is instantaneous. In effect, despite our thousands of years, God wasn't, then was, then wasn't again. For he can't exist indefinitely outside of time.
You can't argue this with the omnipotence argument either. All measure of existence is in comparison with something. If there is nothing to compare to, nothing to notice or be effected by, your existence isn't. It is irrelevent. This is the reason to create to begin with, and it would require a comparitive note. In effect, wouldn't God have to literal "pass the time" for himself as well?
Thanks for the assist Pastor Art. I think. If I read your post right, that is.
Wanderer, you ask some more, good, probing questions related to our arguments. Let's see if I understand the thrust: If God exists outside if time, and is unbound by it, and lives in a sort of "eternal now," then God cannot act, since action presumes sequential events. However, since we know that God does act within our timeline, through our history, therefore, God himself experiences time--and my logic collapses like a cheap lawn-chair.
But, this argument only presumes to theorize about things neither we nor the Biblical writers can know anything about because they simply did not write about it, and God has not revealed it. You could respond that my argument is founded on the same theoretical premises, but it's one step closer to what we know because we have the record of history and the assertions of the biblical writers to go by. If God created the world, and if God is eternal, and if God is without beginning, then we can safely theorize with biblical grounds that God created time and exists outside of it.
But to go on and theorize about what kind of experience God has, or how he is able to act outside of our time experiences simply cannot be founded on anything in the biblical record. My theory and Art's theory deal with predestination in terms of what can be asserted based on what we know. But to go beyond that is pure speculation.
We assume remains essentially unchanged throughout eternity. Yet if God acts, if God creates, if God interacts with his created beings, doesn't this set up a logical rebuttal of the assertion? All interaction changes by the very nature of interaction. At the very least, new memories are gained. New relationships are formed. New events are experienced. Right?
But this is the mystery of Deity. How is it that God never changes, yet he responds to our prayers? He changes his mind and withholds judgment? How is it that God can act if there is no time that applies to him? If God existed before time, how could he have acted in the first place to create a dimension of time to act within?
I don't know.
Also, based on what we do know, Einstein and others since him have recognized that time is relative based on how fast you are traveling in relation to something else. The faster you travel in relation to me, the slower your clock goes. Get up to the speed of light, presumably, time stops. Within our own plane of experience, then, is an essential conundrum: if time stops for light, how, then, can it illuminate anything? We know that light actually travels from the Sun to the Earth in about ten minutes. How is it possible, since time stops or is so slow for the photon?
I don't know. But light still falls.
(This reminds me of the old saw: To get from here, to there, I must first travel half the distance. Then, half the distance again. Then, half the distance again. If I am always traveling just half the distance between where I am and where I want to be, I will never arrive at my destination because there is an infinite series of halfway points between any two points in the universe.
Finally, based on what Einstein theorized, space and time are actually part of the same fabric of existence. The heavier, more massive, an object is, the more it distorts the "space-time" fabric around it.
Who's to say that God doesn't exist within a completely higher order of space and time and that this plane of existence is completely coexistent with him? In other words, suppose we don't exist outside of God, at all, but that we exist within him--not immaterially, like his imagination or dreams, but that God is in and through and around and above all things. This would explain his omnipresence quite nicely and still allow for him to act and experience events within his own framework independent of our own space and time dimensions.
And, returning to the original questions, it still allows for God to ultimately know the outcomes of all out actions because he still remains able to see it as a whole, not myopically like we do.
Regards,
Rich
BlogRodent
Totally, absolutely off-topic...
I saw part of a tv show this afternoon (while waiting for the Canadian Football League's Western Final to begin, admittedly), and on APTN, there was a short segement on Navajo rug-weaving and the local high school's sports teams in -- wait for it -- Shiprock, NM!
What a beautiful place. Is that big mesa where your town gets its name from?
Robby
Shiprock is a unique rock formation which is essentially the neck of a huge volcano. The Dine" (Navajo) call it the Rock with Wings, (Tse" Bit Ai")It has been described as "a Mordorian edifice"
It is incredibly beautiful on these cool clear nights as the sun sets behind it. The town of Shiprock has been called the Jerusalem of the Navajo Nation. I am blessed to be here.
Re; the time/eternity issue. God is eternal and exists in eternity and time simultaneously. The fullness of the God head exists in Jesus and we are His body. Therefore His inter-action is through His church. All time exists as complete before Him. Time is part of creation and is subject to the Creator i.e. His rules and will.
Why don't we get off the philosophical/esoteric definitions and go to the Word (Scripture) which is the only dependable reference?
Perhaps because when you're talking about some issues that the BIble is sparse on, you are forced to stretch every references until it's barely recognizable to support your point. The Bible simply does not talk about some things.
God created man in his image to think logically--and all truth is from God. The Bible is not the only way God reveals himself to us, though our conclusions about General Revelation need to agree with what the Bible explicitly says.
I do not think anything I have written here contradicts scripture. In fact, you have only restated my premises.
Rich
BlogRodent
Beam me up Lord!!
Rich -
"Who's to say that God doesn't exist within a completely higher order of space and time and that this plane of existence is completely coexistent with him? In other words, suppose we don't exist outside of God, at all, but that we exist within him--not immaterially, like his imagination or dreams, but that God is in and through and around and above all things. This would explain his omnipresence quite nicely and still allow for him to act and experience events within his own framework independent of our own space and time dimensions."
I agree with you in regards to this supposition, in fact it is something I have been driving at. As to the issue of omniscience and knowledge of that which is to come, I have come as close as I can with relating my position on these arguments without leaving the framework of the common denominator of religious beliefs among the readers and author of this blog. I have been planning for some time to elaborate on my own on this subject. Perhaps I will soon so if this argument resurfaces (or should I say when this argument resurfaces) I can just have that to point to.
"Rock With Wings" was the title of the documentary, as I recall. I came in half-way, so didn't get the history of the name, but there were quite a few shots of the mesa in the distance during the program. Breath-takingly beautiful!
every morning on the way to work, no matter where my head is at, where my heart is at, i drive down the rocky dirt road outside my house, turn west onto the highway, and Glory!
There is the mountain, the mesa, and Shiprock, in the glow of the rising sun, sometimes golden...sometimes a rosy pink. And it takes my breath away. Every morning. I start to pray...sometimes in tears, but then I see the beauty of His creation and all I can say is Glory! And after school, when i leave the building, and see the shadows on the mesas, the Sleeping Ute mountain in the distance, I take a deep breath, and Thank God that my old eyes still work. Yes Robby, it is a wonderful sight to behold.
i agree that Shiprock is a beautiful place to live! Glory to God, the creator of the universe!
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