The secret of the quiet place.

I’ve had people ask me about the vampire blog I alluded to in my last entry (see my previous blog about zombies).  I hate to disappoint, but I have something more pressing that I want to share.

“Be quiet and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10 NLV)

How often are you quiet?  Are you quiet in your suffering?  Are you quite in your success, your labor, your resting?  What did God mean by “be quiet”?  Some translations read: “be still”.    

Here is what I know from experience: I am prone to sin, and “where words are many, sin is not absent.” (Prov 10:19) I know I talk too much and too soon.  But I think there is more to being quiet, or still, than just silence.  It is calming the busyness of life.  It is removing ourselves from the chaos of TV and emails and texts and phone calls and reports and social media and bills and insurance and cars and homes and cleaning and fixing and hobbies and leisure and…  You get the idea.  Being still and knowing that God is God is the process of stepping away from everything else to center our souls on what is most important; what is eternal.  (see Luke 10:38-42 and 12:33-34) 

Re-centering is desperately needed, and in our culture, we need to do it often.  Without it we forget; we loose sight of eternity.  We become caught up and anxious; ungrounded.  We loose our footing and ability to think clearly and make good decisions.  There is power in quieting our souls.  Great power. 

In martial arts I have learned how to be calm even with someone standing across from me who’s sole intention is to physically conquer me.  It seems counter intuitive that I would seek to be calm at a time like this, but without that calm I am much more likely to make mistakes.  I would also get tired much faster.  With inner stillness I can think and react clearly.  Panic and fear are my enemies.

I have found this to be very similar to the battles I face in life.  The enemy of my soul stands across from me threatening me and those I love with destruction.  And I know that my adversary is not powerless.  His threats are not empty (although ultimately I know the end of the story!).  But I can either react out of fear, or I can be centered, trusting in my good God, not fearing any outcome, and using my power to fight well. 

“My power.”  What does that mean?  In the same way that I have been trained in martial arts, I have been trained by God through His Word and my experience of walking in step with His Spirit (Psalm 18:34).  That training instructs me how to trust.  I falter in this all the time, but I know it is where I need to be, and how I get there is by finding my quite place with God.  I let His Spirit and His Word wash over me and I sink my roots deep into His perfect, unchanging reality of absolute sovereignty and unconditional love.

This is the secret of the quiet place.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”  (Prov 3:5)

ZOMBIES ARE REAL

Okay, that title feels a little sensational, but my guess is that this will be one of my more popular blogs simply because of the title.  We are a zombie-obsessed society.

A quick Internet search revealed that there are literally hundreds and hundreds of zombie movies.  One site has a “list of zombie featured films or list of zombie movies with non low-budget.”  There are 841!  I’m guessing there are hundreds, maybe even thousands more, if we include the low budget films.  There are also TV series, video games, books, comics and songs about them, lots of them.  We even have an annual Mall Crawl where people dress up and act like zombies.

Why are we so fascinated by zombies?  That question has baffled me, until now.  Laying here at 2:38 in the morning it hit me:

Zombies are real!

They don’t look like the zombies you see in popular media, but think about it.  What are the main traits of a zombie?  They are dead people (often called “the undead”) that are reanimated by some force.  They lack consciousness and self-awareness, yet are able to respond to surrounding stimuli.  And they are often depicted as having an appetite for un-undead people – especially their brains.

In his brilliant novel, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis paints an amazing word portrait of what the afterlife might look like.  It wasn’t intended to be an actual picture of what heaven or hell might look like.  I believe it was more an attempt to explore the devastating affects of sin on the human soul.  In the story some people take a bus ride to a sort of pre-heaven place.  Heaven is at the top of a mountain that is visible when they arrive, but in order to make the journey up the mountain, the passengers must go through a process of becoming more substantial because the terrain in heaven is as hard as diamonds to the newly arriving people.  Stepping on the grass is like walking on spikes.  If a raindrop fell it would go through them like a speeding bullet.  Now here’s the part that will help me get my idea of zombies flushed out: the reason these people are unsubstantial is because of the sin and deception they embraced in their earthly lives.  As they rejected truth they would become less substantial; they began to disappear.  As they embraced truth and let go of their vices they become more solid and opaque and were able to make the journey up the mountain.  This is powerful imagery, and it is similar to the point I am trying to make with my zombie metaphor: the deception of sin drains life from us.  In Lewis’ allegory we become like ghosts.  In mine we become like the walking dead.

Deception knocks at our door early on in life.  We begin to wrestle with the temptation to redefine the rules to suit our own desires.  If we don’t set things right, we find ourselves having increasing difficulty identifying reality.  The lies become our ethos.

Here is an over simplified example: Jonny’s parents tell him not to eat too many sweets because it is not good for him.  He begins to push the line of how “sweets” are defined because at this point he is not outright rebellious.  He just finds ways to explain to himself why certain foods really aren’t that bad.  Before long he is sneaking junk food into his room on a daily basis and he develops an appetite that is only satisfied with the least healthy foods.  By the time Jonny is a teenager he is very overweight and it affects every part of his life.  He begins to realize for a moment what his obsession with junk food is costing him, but he explains it away and continues to embrace his addiction.  In his twenties he begins to have serious health issues as his weight exceeds what a normal scale is capable of measuring.  By the time he reaches his thirties his entire existence is defined by his eating habits.  Nothing else seems to matter.  He learns how to manipulate those around him to get the food he craves, thus destroying all of his relationships.  Angry and hopeless he can choose to repent of his deception, or he can continue on his current path, and there will be nothing left of the real Jonny; the young boy that his parents loved and tried to guide.  There will only remain an animated shell; a self-centered rebel left with his appetite for human brains, I mean junk food.  He lacks self-awareness because the deception he embraced is now his reality.  He is a zombie.

I do not believe that all people that are obese are zombies, or even in sin.  That is not the message I am trying to communicate here.  This is merely an example of how rebellion and deception can take over our life.  This story can be played out with many other vices.  It could be obvious ones like substance addiction or sexual sin, or the less obvious ones that I believe can be even more destructive, like arrogance, hate, power hunger or self-sufficiency.  They all have the potential to steal our life and identity by consuming all of our attention and energy.  Our entire existence can be swallowed up into our vice.  That is what I mean by “becoming a zombie”.

The bottom line is that anything that takes the place of God in our lives is an idol.  It becomes our god, and there is only one God that is good.  All the others lead to destruction.

I think there are levels of zombification.  I also believe the zombie disease comes on very slowly in most cases.  It’s much easier to identify it in others than it is in ourselves.  For example, have you ever had a phone conversation with someone and they barely even knew that you’re there?  You could set the phone down and walk away, come back in 40 minutes and they are still talking.  Do you know someone that says or does things that shock others, but they have no clue how disconnected they are?  Have you tried to have a conversation with someone and they just don’t seem to be all there?  Do you know someone that is so caught up in something that all of the rest of the world is looked at through the context of that thing?  (a sex addict looks at everything else from the lens of sex)

You may think that these are just signs of self-centeredness, but self- centeredness is the very thing that makes us susceptible to becoming a zombie.  Life was intended to be relational, because the meaning of life is love, and agape love cannot exist without relationship (see my blog titled “…about suffering” and the section “Made For Love” for more on this).  That is why God is a Trinity.  Even within Himself, God has relationship.  God is love.  I call on C.S. Lewis again to help make my point.  In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis writes this about the Trinity:

And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.

I did an Internet search for “how to prepare for the zombie apocalypse” and 811,000 pages came up.  wow… 

The bad news is, we are all infected with the zombie virus.  It is in our sinful nature.  The book of Romans has a lot to say about it, way more wisdom than I can give.  However, I will give some culturally relevant thoughts.

The best preparation is prevention.  Here are a few tips on how to inoculate yourself against this deadly pandemic:

·      The First Commandment is: “You shall have no other gods before me.”  This is the only real way of staying human.  Don’t let anything take the place of God; keep Him at the center and His grace will see you through.

·      When you have moments of clarity about what your vice is doing to you, like Jonny did, act on it.  Get whatever help you need.  Listen to those around you that love you and want you to be free. 

·      I often say that reality is a brutal teacher.  Embrace the lessons it teaches you.  “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)  No more excuses or blame.

·      Don’t hang around other zombies.  You will get infected.

Maybe next time I’ll write about our fascination with vampires.

about the Big Banger.

To some, the idea of belief in an all-powerful God that created the universe is like believing in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy.  They think of God’s miracles in the same way they think of Santa bringing presents to billions of kids in one day: impossible.  In one respect it makes sense that so many would reject faith once they grow up.  After all, they were told fun lies about things like the Easter Bunny and the stork that delivers babies, why shouldn’t they think all the nice stories about Jesus, Noah’s flood and the Garden of Eden fall into the same category?

In my last entry I blurred the line that divides natural and supernatural.  I indicated that my next blog would attempt to show that it is most reasonable to believe in some kind of god.  In the process I also intend to strengthen my argument about belief in the supernatural and miracles. 

What if I could demonstrate, using solid scientific evidence, that a miracle actually did take place?  After all, science is what most atheists appeal to as a case against God (they would do the same for our Santa myth if any adults truly believed and taught that he is real, and rightfully so).  So, lets measure God using their tools and see what we find.

What is a miracle?

Here is a standard definition:

1. A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is considered to be divine. 2. A highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment.

Miracles are by definition supernatural occurrences, as seen in “1.” above.  I have already addressed this part in my last blog.

The second part of the definition focuses more on probability.  What is probability?

Probability

Probability is how we measure how likely something is to happen.  For example, if I flip a coin, there is an equal 50% probability that it will land on heads or tails.  If I roll a die, there is a one in six chance that it will land on any of the numbers on it.  Probability can be expressed as a ratio, percentage, fraction, or in decimal form.  Most often it is expressed on a scale from 0 (impossible) to 1 (certainty) or as an equivalent percentage from 0 to 100%.  Numbers that are extremely small are expressed as a negative exponent (e.g. 10^-40) because there would be too many zeros after the decimal to write out.  (It can get way more complicated than this, but for the sake of my point this should suffice.)

If God exists, it would not be possible to calculate the probability of him existing simply because He, by very nature of being God, would have to transcend everything else that is.  If God made the universe, he could not be made from the stuff inside the universe and thus could not be measured by it.  So, how can we use probability to show that it is most reasonable to believe in some kind of god?  First, let’s use it to show that there is such a thing as miracles.

The Universe

The universe we live in is a miracle.  I don’t mean that as a euphemism.  I mean it in a literal technical sense.  The generally accepted definition of “impossible” is anything with a probability of 10^-50 or less (although probabilities much, much larger than this are highly unlikely).  What is the probability of our universe being finely tuned as it is to support life?

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross Ph.D., in his book The Creator and the Cosmos, provides a list that gives an estimate of the probability of 128 parameters required for life support on earth.  That probability is 10^-166.  He also provides a list of 35 characteristics in the universe that must fall within narrowly defined values in order for any life to exist.  “Narrowly defined” in astronomy means something different than us lay folk are accustomed to.  For example: the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational force constant.  If the electromagnetic force relative to gravity were increased by only one part in 10⁴⁰, life could not exist.  That is astronomically narrow (pun intended).  And that’s only one of the 35.

Now to further exacerbate the situation, understand that all of these probabilities must be compounded because they must all exist at the same time.  Let’s use our coin again to make the point.  I wrote above that a coin has an equal 50% (.5) chance of landing on heads or tails.  What if we had two coins?  The chance that they would both land on heads is .25.  We have to multiply the first probability with the second one: .5 x .5.  If we have three coins, then: .5 x .5 x .5, and so on.  If you do that with all of the fine-tuning odds we know about (which are exponentially smaller than .5), you come up with an inconceivably low probability.  The popular cosmologist Carl Sagan estimated the chance that life could evolve on any planet as one chance in 10^{2,000,000,000}.  How’s that for impossible?  Even atheist scientists know this is a significant challenge to a purely materialistic view of origins.  I recently heard this quote from Stephen Hawking: “The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous.  I think there are clearly religious implications.”

Indeed.

Some would argue that nothing is impossible (from a probability standpoint) given the right circumstances, and theoretically, they may be right.  For example, I think we would all agree that it is impossible to roll a two on a die 100,000 times in a row.  However, if we rolled that die many trillions of times, there may be a chance that it could happen, however improbable.  The more we rolled, the greater the odds that it could happen.  But if I were playing a dice game with you where twos were desirable and I rolled even 20 in a row, you would rightfully assume I was cheating.  It would be most reasonable to believe so.  In the same way, it is most reasonable to believe that some higher power, a transcendent god of some kind, was involved with creating our universe for life.  I will strengthen that point below.  For now, I have used science to show that a miracle did happen: life and the universe that supports it.  This is true regardless of how we define ”impossible” because if we refer back to the second definition of “miracle” above, we see that it does not have to be impossible, only highly improbable.  Obviously the enormously improbable has happened.

The Big Bang

Back to belief in God being most reasonable. 

All respected astronomers agree that the universe started with the Big Bang.  This is very important.  Why?   Because the implications are that space and time had a beginning.  The Bible is the only holy book that claims that the universe and time began ex nihilo (from nothing), and that is exactly what astronomers say about the universe and Big Bang cosmology.  But both science and philosophy are aware that nothing comes from nothing.  According to the law of causality, something must have caused the Bang.  If there was a beginning, there was a Beginner.  If there was a Big Bang, there must be an even Bigger Banger because, as I’ve already alluded to above, if some agent caused something, it must transcend the thing it caused; it must be above and beyond it.   If God made the universe, he could not be made from the stuff inside the universe.  Therefore, Big Bang cosmology leads to the conclusion that there must have been a causal agent that transcends our physical laws, so it is most reasonable to believe in some kind of god.

An objection

What if science revises its findings about the Big Bang or even the laws of probability?  Does that ruin the argument above?  Well, I guess in one way it would.  However, what if there actually is no conflict between science and religion to solve?  Even if I had the time, I’m not sure I would be able to summarize this argument.  If you are interested and have some scientific and / or philosophic knowledge, I highly recommend the book, Where The Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by the brilliant philosopher, Alvin Plantinga.

Finally…

What is it in us that we think that when we understand something by natural cause, we exclude the possibility of the hand of God being involved?  Why are the natural and God so often put on a different planes?  I believe God is the author of all natural and supernatural processes.  Our understanding or lack of understanding does not change what is (although it helps us master it).  In this way, science seems arrogant to me.  Our correct reaction to the knowledge we gain from studying our universe would be worship.

about the supernatural.

Throughout all of recorded history, man has pondered the question of a god, or gods.  We have sought

the supernatural and looked to it for answers to many of life’s mysteries.  The advance of science has progressively removed the credit that has historically been attributed to the supernatural and placed it in the realm of natural, explainable phenomena.

So where does that leave us as followers of Jesus?  Our foundational doctrines demand that we believe that the supernatural exists.  Some reject science in favor of faith.  Some just don’t deal with the questions that arise. 

I intend to argue, from science, that the supernatural does exist.

I think the right way to start would be to first understand what is meant by the words “nature” and “supernatural”.

Nature:

I did a little research and found many different definitions of “nature” ranging from: “the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities” on one end of the range, to: “the entire universe with all its phenomena” on the other end.

Supernatural:

This one is a little easier once we agree on what “nature” is.  Webster defines it:

1: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially: of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil

2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature

   b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)

I suspect those definitions added nothing to your understanding of those words, however it is important to have a frame of reference as we go forward.  It is also important to understand that words are a way to describe the things that exist so that we can communicate and think about them.  But the things themselves are not bound by the words we use to describe them.  There are physical things that exist that cannot be visualized or graphically comprehended (as I will explain below), but we know through other means that they exist.  In the same way, there are aspects of nature and the supernatural that go beyond the words we use to describe them.  I intend to blur the line between these two words.

Blurring the line:

Lets look at some natural things.  We’ll start with something simple like a rock.  A rock is very obviously something we would consider natural.  A geologist or paleontologist can give you all sorts of information about how it was formed, what minerals and other matter it contains, it’s history, etc. 

Lets take a quantum leap forward and look at something much more complex, like a tree.  We need to employ much more science to understand what happens with a tree.  We can talk about it from biology, chemistry, physics, etc.  A tree is considered to be alive, so maybe even some philosophy is required.  Even still, we know quite a bit about trees and they still fall comfortably into our definition of nature. 

Lets take another giant leap forward and look at gravity.  Is gravity natural?  General Relativity, which is all about gravity, is called the “the most tested theory in physics” (proven to beyond 15 decimal places).  We know a lot about gravity, yet it begins to take us into a somewhat metaphysical realm.  We know about gravity from its effects, but we can’t really touch or hold gravity itself. 

One more giant leap, this one takes us to realms that we cannot observe. How do we know they exist if we cannot observe them?  This may stretch your brain a little, but read on and I’ll explain.  It’ll be fun.  An example of something that must exist, but cannot be directly observed, would be the extra dimensions predicted by string theory.  I’m not a physicist, but in my limited understanding I would explain it like this: Scientists have tried to unify the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics and were not able to.  They began to add spatial dimensions and things began to come together mathematically.  It is now clear that there are at least 6 more spatial dimensions in addition to the 3 that our universe functions in.  In other words, it appeared that either general relativity was wrong, or quantum mechanics was wrong.  Since we know they are both necessary for our universe to exist as it does, they had to find out what was missing.  The extra dimensions were the answer, and they have now demonstrated those extra dimensions through other experiments, although there is still much to learn.  But we know they exist, and cannot visualize them.  Do you want to try?  Okay, you asked for it.  It may make your head hurt.  If you add only one dimension to the three we function in, you could turn a basketball inside out without puncturing it.  Can you visualize that?  Me neither.

Are these extra dimensions part of nature?  If we say, “yes” because they are testable and provable, then that implies that our ability to test something is the litmus test for what nature is, and that doesn’t seem to work because our ability to test is constantly increasing, and that would infer that nature is increasing with it.  According to our range of definitions above for “nature”, we would definitely have to say that they are not part of nature according to the first definition.  It seems they may fit into the second definition, however it is so broad that it seems to loose its meaning.  Essentially that definition means “everything”.  So, we will stick with the definitions more like the first one.  In that case, at least, I have successfully blurred the line separating nature from super-nature.  And it is possible (and more reasonable I think) that the answer is “no”, these extra dimensions are not part of nature.  They sure seem to fit the definition above for “supernatural”.  If that is the case, then I have sufficiently shown that there are things that exist that are supernatural.

In my next blog I will expand this train of thought and show, once again through science, that it is most reasonable to believe in not only the supernatural, but in a god of some sort.

about science and the book of Genesis.

Science has advanced at an astonishing rate over the last century.  We now know many things with a very high level of probability.  What implications do these findings have regarding the Christian faith?  Has science disproved the Bible?  What about the book of Genesis, which gives an account of creation? 

Below are brief summaries of some of the different beliefs that Christians hold concerning science and the claims laid out in the book of Genesis:

Theistic Evolution

Francis Collins is the scientist that headed up the team that decoded the human genome.  He is currently the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and he is a committed Christian.  Collins believes that the creation account in the book of Genesis is a poetic story, much like the Psalms and Song of Solomon.  He does not believe that we should look to it for any understanding of the origins of our universe or life on earth.  I recommend his book The Language of God for more on his views.

Young Earth Creationism

Ken Ham is the president of the Creation Museum and the Answers in Genesis organization.  He interprets the creation account in Genesis as a literal six days, and he believes that the universe and all of life was created in that time period less than 10,000 years ago.  I recommend his book The New Answers Book 1 for more on his views.

Old Earth Creationism

Hugh Ross is an accomplished astrophysicist and Christian apologist.  He, like Ken Ham, also believes in a literal understanding of Genesis.  However, he interprets the text differently than Ham does.  Ross believes that the bible is the only religious text that accurately describes the origin of life and the universe.  I recommend Ross’ book The Genesis Question for more on his views.

I purposely chose to personalize each of the views above by including the name of one of the people that embrace them.  I did that because we humans are typically quick to polarize and pick sides rather than research the evidence and engage in civil, intelligent conversation with people of differing views, and I thought that maybe it would help make the point that we can disagree on the nonessentials and still get along.  Would you reject Francis Collins as a sincere follower of Jesus because you disagree with him?  Would you question the authenticity of Ken Ham’s relationship with God because his views don’t fit your interpretation of origins?  Do Hugh Ross’ beliefs arouse anger or distress? (not that anyone has expressed these sentiments) There are things worth fighting for, but this isn’t one of them.  Let’s love and respect each other, keeping in mind that, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12)

Followers of Jesus do not need to fear truth, what others believe or what science discovers.