I used to worry about a lot of things:

My career

My health

My finances

And many more

In fact, I used to keep a written list of things to worry about. It was arranged in order of priority. It ran into 4 or 5 typewritten pages. When I had some free time, I would pull out the list and start worrying my way down page one. Usually, I would lose interest before page two.

But, over the years, my “worry list” has shriveled up. Part of this is due to my age. But, most of the shrinkage in my “worry list” is due to my growing understanding of the length and breadth of my life.

For much of my 73 years, my understanding of my life was that I had about 80 years to work with. I had about 80 years to get everything done. When I was 20, this was comforting. I had so much time at my disposal that I could throw away a year or two……even a decade or two…….and never miss it. And I did just that as I built my career. But, as I have grown older, the runway ahead of me began to shrink. Death, which was pretty much a theoretical concept when I was young, has become much more real and present. This old understanding of death as the end of my life led to a slowly growing despair. With each passing day, I was one day closer to old age, decrepitude, and, ultimately, the dead black nothing of death.

When I became a functioning Christian, I discovered a new understanding of death…….my death. Instead of the end of my life……the end of me; instead of being a stone wall that I was doomed to crash into at 80 miles an hour, death became something entirely different. Christianity teaches that death is not the end of life. Rather, death is a transition from one format of life into an entirely different format…….a format that is so radically different that we cannot wrap our brains around it. When we die, we change from a time limited physical existence to a new existence, where time imposes no limits. From a practical perspective, time ceases to exist. This eternal, spiritual world is centered around our creator. It is built on one concept……love. This is the “real” world…….because this is the world where we will exist forever. The irony here is that the spiritual world is far more real than our brief temporal/physical world. Eternal life is God’s promise, whether you are a Christian or not.

With that promise in mind, the nature of my “worry list” changed. Suddenly, just about all 5 pages of my “worry list” evaporated. It turns out that almost every worry on my list will go away when I die. The crushing weight of 5 pages of worry will simply disappear. My worries will go away because they are almost all confined to the temporal/physical world that I operate in today……..and for a few more years. They simply will not be relevant in the spiritual world. The great irony here is that my 5 pages of worries will be resolved……..fixed…….by my death.

So……..what is left? As a Christian……..what do I worry about today?

Three things:

I worry about my friend, a Buddhist.

I worry about a young man……..a committed atheist/secular humanist.

I worry about a young woman who defines Christianity as a “cult” and who is dabbling in the occult…..which apparently is not a “cult”.

I love these people. And I worry about them. I worry because God promises them eternity as well…….an eternity devoid of love and joy.

It will just be a different eternity from the eternity God offers me.

‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.

’Jesus describing two different eternities, Luke 16: 25-26, ESV

Let’s face it. We all sin. We do it every day. It is a rare day that goes by when we don’t think, say, or do something that increases our separation from God. To make it worse, we are repeat offenders. We are all serial sinners. Since we commit the same offense over and over, it is worth investigating our motivation.

Why do we repeatedly do things that drive a wedge between us and God?

Why do we choose separation from God?

Why do we sin?

Why do I sin?

I think that it must be that we believe that life can be better apart from God. For some, this is global. Everything they do, they do apart from God. This is the world of the pure secular humanist. For some, perhaps most, the separation is compartmental. They go to church, they put $5 in the collection, they sing the songs, and pray the prayers. Then, they walk out into a secular humanist culture and spend their day following the norms of that culture. They tell small lies. They watch media that is filled with sex, murder, and mayhem. They hate the “other” political party. They ignore the poverty and suffering that surround them. This is the world of the nominal Christian.

Both the global, full-time, serial sinner, and the compartmentalized, part-time, serial sinner intentionally choose separation from God.

Both sin.

Both believe that they can succeed…….apart from God.

Both are wrong.

Both fail to consider the existence of both a temporal realm and an eternal realm. In the temporal realm, we can get away with separation from God. We can even profit from it. Consider our leaders: The average senator has a job that pays less than $200,000/year. The average senator has been in office for a little over 10 years. And yet, the median net worth of a senator is over 3 million dollars. To accumulate a net worth of 3 million over 10 years, the average senator would have to save over $200,000 every year. This doesn’t leave much room for Starbucks. In the eternal realm, separation from God is far more problematic. Say what you will about hell. Eternal separation from God means eternity apart from the source of love and joy in the universe. Eternity is a long time.

Setting the eternal ramifications aside, my experience is that the most fully engaged Christians are some of the most joyful people I have ever met. I believe that this is because they are closer to the source of love and joy than the rest of us. Serious Christians are in touch with the eternal realm.

In the temporal world:

You can have fun……apart from God.

You can make money, even get rich…….apart from God.

You can become powerful…….apart from God.

You can be sexually stimulated…….apart from God.

But

You will never find great love and joy…….apart from God.

The great irony is this:

When God warns you not to sin……he is warning you not to choose separation from him……..he is warning you that by choosing separation from him, you are choosing to sacrifice love and joy………for temporal fun and money.

What is the most devastating thing you could ever possibly hear?

Jesus……..saying “I don’t know you”.

This is the endpoint…….should you choose separation.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Jesus explaining the endpoint of choosing separation, Matthew 7: 21-23, ESV

I grew up with 60’s and 70’s rock and roll. This music, in my never humble opinion, is the greatest popular music of all time. The lyrics cover a broad range of topics. A great many of these songs, probably most of them, were about love. Young people today grow up hearing music that is different. Today’s music deals with a lot of social issues. Love, however, isn’t the central theme. It may not be in the top ten. Today’s young people are missing out. I think that they are struggling to find their footing in a love starved culture.

When I look at my world……..when I try to find the most important thing. I think that it is love. There is nothing that you could take away from me that would be more painful than the loss of a loved one. There is nothing that you could add to my life that would make me happier than to love and be loved.

This is not the way that our culture operates. Turn on your TV tonight. Count the number of times that you see an act of love. There is plenty of sex……but love……not so much. Count the number of times that you see anger, violence, and even hate. Listen to our leaders. Do they teach love and generosity……or do they sell anger and hate. Watch the news…….more of the same.

Our culture wants and needs to love and be loved. And yet, we consume a diet of anger and hate. Our need for love should not come as a surprise. Love is the very heart of Christianity and of the Bible. Christianity and the Bible teach that we were put here by a creator who operates in both our temporal realm and his spiritual realm. But why were we created? Why did God go to all of the trouble? I believe that we were put here for one reason……to love. We were put here to love and be loved. We were put here to love God and each other. Love and God are one and the same. Love is the very definition of God. The impetus to love is written on our hearts. It was put there by our creator. When we ignore it…..when we indulge in hate and anger, we are going to war against the very core of our being.

We have lost our way.

Why?

We have lost our way because our culture has shifted from love to science and technology. We have shifted from God to secular humanism.

There is good news and bad.

The good news is that science and technology…….secular humanism…….will not destroy us. The bad news is that they won’t save us either.

The absence of love is what will destroy us. And only love can save us.

So……how do we save ourselves?

We save ourselves……..our culture……by returning to our roots. The survival of our temporal culture requires us to turn away from secular humanism and return to Christianity…….to return to our core……to love…….to love God and each other. If we can do that……individually and corporately……….we can fix our temporal world.

God will take care of the spiritual world.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians, 1-13, ESV

If you are a parent, you will recognize the characters in today’s post.

Even if you are not a parent, you have certainly seen them out in public: a parent trying to corral a child who just will not obey…….a child who is determined to get what he wants even against his parent’s wishes. The scene is usually ugly……sometimes a little ugly…….sometimes it is awful. Without getting into the specifics of their disagreement, I think that we can all agree that the fight itself is unpleasant to watch. If you could replay the last time you saw this scene play out, I’m fairly sure you would be sympathetic to the parent. If you could offer a solution to the problem, it would probably be that the child should settle down and obey his parent. Your solution would be for the child to submit to the authority of the parent……..the sovereignty of the parent. While this is not an absolute, the parent typically has more knowledge and experience. Furthermore, the parent loves the child and is looking out for the child’s best interests…….in the long run. We know from experience that the world runs better when the parent is in control than when the child is in control. This is true, even when the parent is not completely in the right. I can recall an episode where my father and I had a disagreement about a pair of jeans that I had just bought. Looking back, as a parent myself, I can say with confidence that my father was wrong. But, I obeyed him. I submitted to his authority. And our family survived.

The post this week is not about whether our parent is right or wrong. It is not about whether God is right or wrong from our temporal perspective.

The post is about authority and submission to authority.

Authority…….sovereignty…….comes in several “flavors”.

Absolute sovereignty……..whatever the boss says is true whether you like or not. When the boss says jump……you jump. Good and bad……right and wrong are defined by the sovereign. This is not negotiable. Everybody operates on the same set of rules……the same set of definitions. Everybody is headed in the same direction.

Limited sovereignty………most of what the boss says is true. When the boss tells you to do something, you assess it and decide if it suits you. If it works for you…….you obey. The same applies to right and wrong…….good and bad. You listen, you assess, you accept what you like and discard what you don’t like. Everything is negotiable. You have a personal veto over the boss.

Non-sovereignty…….an external boss does not exist. You do as you please. No need to negotiate. No need to justify your behavior. You are the boss of your tiny corner of the universe. You go your own way……and so does everybody else. You make your own rules and definitions and so does everybody else. The guy who robs you in the alley……..is just as right as you are. Hitler is just as right as mother Teresa.

The tradeoff here is clear. Absolute sovereignty yields uniformity. Uniformity yields peace. Conflict……war…….is eliminated. We all work together toward a common goal……..a goal chosen by the sovereign……..whether we agree with that goal or not. Non-sovereignty gives us freedom. We look at the world. We assess our appetites. We act in a way that gives us what we want. But……so does the other guy. We believe that we are right. We believe that we are good people. But so does he. We butt heads…….we go to war. Nobody is right. Nobody is good…….because there is no uniform definition of right and good. When you boil it down this tradeoff is the dividing line between Creationism……..Christianity……..and secular humanism.

It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to determine which path the world is on.

But………it’s not that simple.

There is a temporal world and there is an eternal spiritual world. God’s absolute sovereignty extends over both. Our freedom is absolutely confined to the temporal world. Our freedom ends when our temporal clock runs out. God’s sovereignty has no end….no limits.

In the final analysis, the only escape from the eternal sovereignty of God is to deny his sovereignty. The only intellectually honest way to deny God’s sovereignty……..is to deny his existence. This is the “unforgivable sin” described in Matthew.

Denying the absolute sovereignty of God can work. People do it every day. But, it can only work in the temporal world. And even then, ignoring or denying God’s sovereignty often fails. At death, we all transition from our temporal world to God’s eternal world. When we die, we can no longer evade the absolute sovereignty of God.

In a nutshell…….this is the fate of man. One day, we will all experience God’s absolute sovereignty. It is worth the trouble to become familiar with it now.

“Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come”.

Jesus explaining “the unforgiveable sin”, Matthew 12: 31-32, ESV

Today’s post is a follow-up to last week’s post describing sin as the process of drifting away from our relationship with God……..rather than the act of breaking a rule. This week, I want to develop that a bit further.

If we view sin as the breaking of rules, then we succeed by keeping track of all of the rules and honoring them. History tells us that this is not possible in practice. But, at least it is straightforward. Diligently follow all 635 of the rules…….you become a “good person”………you spend eternity in paradise………where you will, presumably, continue obeying the rules. But, where is God in this process? He is, no doubt, buried in the rules……”Love God”. But this approach is flawed. This approach to Christianity puts our focus on an intermediate step…….the rules. In a way, we wind up worshiping an enormous list of rules. Even if we could pull it off…….diligently honor 635 rules all day, every day for 80 or 90 years……..we would be missing the point of our faith. Even worse, we would be missing out on the power, not to mention the joy, of Christianity. Carried to its extreme, it is entirely possible to flawlessly follow the rules and to never know and experience God. This is tragic……..but it happens. The Bible is full of examples of people who did just that. Picture Caiaphus.The history of the Christian church is full of people who did bad things…….all while following the rules. Caiaphus carefully followed the rules. All the while, he viciously attacked God. In our modern church, it is not hard to find a committed Christian who follows the commandments but who mistreats members of the LGBT++ community……..or followers of other faiths. Consider the oxymoron of the antisemitic Christian.

But

The rules are not the heart of Christianity.

The heart of Christianity is God. And love is the heart of God. The rules are an intermediate step in our journey to God.

Focus on the rules………and you will completely miss the entire point of Christianity. You will miss out on the joy of relationship.

To put it bluntly, sin is distance from God. Sin is distance from love. The greatest tragedy in a human life is the Christian who religiously adheres to the rules listed in the Bible……..and in the process, allows his relationship to God’s love wither. This “good person” may very well be the greatest sinner of all.

So…….how do you know if you are the “good person” who obeys the rules without knowing God? How do you know if you are one of the “righteous” sinners?

The acid test is joy.

Joy grows out of love……..love grows out of relationship with God.

You will know it when you see it on the face of someone who is nurturing their relationship with God.

Even more importantly……..you may be the one…….whose joy demonstrates God’s love to others.

“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Jesus, John 14:23, ESV

I was once on a golf course that a US president had played on a few days earlier. He made headlines by shooting under 70. The trouble is that he took 3 shots off of the first tee and didn’t count them. I have the use of a house in AZ. It is on a cliff overlooking a golf course. Below me there is a green, protected by a sand trap. I have watched golfers deal with that sand trap for several years. I have never yet seen a golfer take a legal shot to get out of the sand trap.

These are not bad people. And yet, they each turned in a score card that was many strokes less than what they actually shot. I doubt that any of us would call their behavior sin. We tend to view sin as an act…….an act that breaks a rule. Christianity is a faith that is based primarily on two rules…..love God…..love everybody else. The ten commandments expand on these two rules. Beyond that there are hundreds of rules on the old testament that deal primarily with diet and the system of sacrifice.

But……..the core of Christianity is love.

Back to sin.

We think of sin as the breaking of a rule. We then go a step further. We rank our sins by their severity. There are big horrible sins and there are little tiny sins. We ask for forgiveness for the big sins and we generally deal with the tiny sins by justifying them. We are masters at the art of justification. We tell ourselves that people who commit little justifiable sins are basically “good people” and people who commit big sins are “bad people”. The problem is that we manage to justify our sin. The problem is that we convince ourselves that we are “good people”.

This is wrong……..it is wrong from the ground up.

Sin is not the act of breaking a rule.

Sin is the process of separating ourselves from our creator. Our very lives flow from our creator. Separation from God leads to death…….both spiritual and physical. The metaphor that the Bible uses is a plant. Cut a plant off from its roots and it will die.

The logic here tells us that there is no such thing as a tiny justifiable sin. There is no such thing as a good person. We have all separated ourselves from God. Even worse…….we continue to do so……every day.

Sin is the process of making choices that increase the distance between us and God. This is a cumulative process. Each act of separation builds on other acts……..until we are lost.

The irony here is that the guy who commits the big evil is usually fully aware of his situation. The guy who commits the tiny justifiable wrong is usually oblivious. The guy who only commits little tiny wrongs tells himself, ” I’m a good person …….at least I’m not like the really evil guy”. The problem is that the guy who commits the tiny justifiable wrong can be just as desperately separated from God as the guy who commits the great evil. The problem here is that they can both wind up just as dead.

We need to rethink our understanding of sin.

Sin is not breaking a rule. That is merely a symptom.

Sin is allowing the separation from God to develop.

And we are all guilty………some of us just don’t know it…….yet.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis

Love God.

He is the sovereign creator, worship no other
Do not worship your creation…….idols
Do not abuse his name…..Revere his holiness

Love everyone else

Don’t lie

Don’t steal

Don’t murder

Sex is for husbands and wives

Honor your parents

Don’t covet

Rest on Sunday

These commands are not negotiable. They were either spoken by Jesus or written by the hand of God. These commands are the foundation of Christianity. And yet, a surprising percentage of Christians cannot recite them.

I have heard them described as “narrow minded”…….outdated.

The sad reality is that it is a rare day when we don’t violate one or more of them. Often, this is because we don’t give them any thought. Often, this is because we just don’t like them. But, the main reason that we violate these cardinal commands of God is that we believe that we have a better idea…….a better plan on how we should run our life……..a better idea on how the world should run. Sadly, we often violate these commands…….because we don’t know them.

And so we go through our day.

We say things that are not true.
We kill each other……either directly…….or we send an army to do it.
We abort our children.
We ignore the poverty around us.
We redefine our sex……by fiat….either by our behavior or by surgery.
We vote for politicians who do these things…….and worse.

And just how is that working out for us?

The world and our society are failing. We talk about sustainability while we destroy our society and the ecosystem that we should be caring for.

By any rational measure, we are not managing the planet well.

Now, imagine a world where we all obeyed the bedrock commands of our sovereign creator. This is a purely hypothetical exercise. Because the other guy is not going to go along.

I have always told my sons. “When trying to solve a problem…….focus on the part of the problem that you can control”.
And you cannot control what the other guy does.

What to do?

Review the commands of God.
Memorize them.
Recite them…….every day…….every hour if you need to.
Weigh what you say, think, and do against them.
And wade into a world that ignores them.

You will make a tiny change……figuratively…….a drop in the ocean.

That drop is tiny…….but it is all that you can do. More importantly…….it is all that you will be held accountable for.

Now, back to the world that I asked you to imagine…….the world where these commands are followed……by everyone. Such a world exists. In fact, that world has been promised to you.

If you want it, start with the first command.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8, ESV

I had a nightmare.

My three sons were taken away. They were in a large factory where they were being processed along a ragged assembly line. I could tell from the talk that they were being packaged up to be sold as human slaves. I charged down the line, trying to find them……to rescue them. I found my oldest son, the first of my sons to be saved. I continued to look for my other two sons. Then I woke up. I never found the other two.

My first waking thought was to pray, “God! strike down the evil people causing human slavery!” And I did. I prayed a hard, fervent, angry prayer.

My second thought was, “Why hasn’t God done this already?” This goes to the heart of a question that has haunted Christianity from the start:

“Why does a loving God allow suffering?”

When faced with suffering, my first response has always been to trust God: “I have to believe that God knows what he is doing”.

But, this morning, that just didn’t seem to be enough. The suffering in my nightmare was so huge…….so immediate. So I dug a little deeper.

Consider the human condition.

Suffering exists. But, it is confined to our temporal world. All suffering is temporary…….by definition. Relationship with God, on the other hand, is a function of the spiritual world. It is, by definition, eternal.

God either creates suffering……..or at the very least……..he allows it to go on. In Job, God gives Satan explicit permission to make Job suffer. Even worse, this is repeated……..which means that it is important. I have to conclude that eradicating human suffering is not God’s highest priority. Eradicating my own suffering may be my highest priority, followed by eradicating the suffering of others. But, I am not God. The fact that God allows suffering: Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, disease, crime, and much more…….tells me that God has other priorities. Human suffering may not even be one of the top ten problems on God’s “to-do” list.

Which leads me to the question: “What does God want more than anything else?”

Relationship

God wants an ongoing, daily, two way conversation. What God wants is to hear from me…….and you.

I think that it is quite possible that when a child suffering the pain of human slavery prays to God fervently…….daily……God may see that as a win. God could very well be more pleased by the relationship than he is saddened by the suffering.

We see suffering as a problem because we don’t like it………because our human priority is to make it go away.

But, God has different priorities. God’s biggest problem is not our suffering. God’s biggest problem is our relationship with him. The problem of relationship is what he is focused on. He has used…..and he will continue to use suffering to create relationship and to salvage relationship. If you don’t believe me……..just look at the cross.

The next step in my analysis is troubling.

Suppose I am driving my car and some jerk cuts me off and gives me a “one finger salute”. I respond with a blast of obscenity. In the process, I fail in my obedience to the command “love others” …..and several other commands as well. I have damaged my relationship with God. God may very well see my road rage and the damage to our relationship that it has caused as a bigger problem than the suffering of the human slave who is praying to him right now.

And there is another disturbing side of our suffering. I think you can make a strong case……..that taken as a whole, mankind spends more effort on our relationship with God when we are suffering than when we are not suffering.

Sad…….but true.

So……

The key to dealing with the problem of suffering is to focus on God’s priority……..that is…..relationship. When we focus on the suffering instead of relationship, it is because we put our priorities ahead of God’s priority.

In short:

Focus more energy on increasing your eternal relationship with God.

Focus less energy on worrying about temporary suffering.

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Jesus clarifying the priority of God vs. the priorities of mankind, Matthew 16:23, ESV

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Jesus putting Peter in charge of Christianity, Matthew 16: 16-18. ESV

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Jesus defining secular humanism for Peter, Matthew 16: 21-23, ESV

This has always been one of the most shocking exchanges in the Bible. Think about it. Jesus puts Peter in charge of his church and 3 verses later calls him Satan!

Jesus is setting up a juxtaposition. It is the same conflict that humankind struggles with today.

On the one hand is the spiritual world revealed to man by God.

On the other hand is the secular world driven by the logic and appetites of mankind.

This conflict has several features:

These two worlds views are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true. One of them is wrong.

Using physical facts…….using human logic……..we cannot absolutely prove or, for that matter, disprove either of them.

And yet, ultimately, every last one of us must sort this out.

Ultimately, every last one of us must choose between these two worlds views:

A world, both physical and spiritual, created by and ruled by God.

A physical world that just happened and is run by mankind.

One of these explanations is based on revelation…….given by the creator.

One of these explanations is based on things that mankind has figured out.

In each case, there are parts of the explanation that can be supported by hard historical fact.

In each case, there are parts of the explanation that cannot be proven.

And so we fill in the gaps. The Christian fills the gaps with revelations of the spiritual realm given by our creator…..God. The secular humanist fills the gaps with theories and assumptions given to us primarily by science………and this is built on human logic and observation, which is limited to the physical realm. These theories and assumptions have never been proven. These theories and assumptions are not facts…….not yet……possibly never.

And so we are left hanging.

The most important decision in the world…….in our lifetime.

And it hinges on how we weigh two imponderables:

The revelation of the spiritual world given by our creator

Or

The explanation of the physical world based on unproven……likely unprovable……theories and assumptions.

Ultimately, this decision comes down to trust.

You can trust the creator…….or you can trust the theories and assumptions…….given to you by the scientists………the same people who told Columbus that the world was flat…….the same people who told Copernicus that the earth was the center of the universe.

The clock is running.

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Jesus putting Peter in charge of Christianity, Matthew 16: 16-18. ESV

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Jesus defining secular humanism for Peter, Matthew 16: 21-23, ESV

This has always been one of the most shocking exchanges in the Bible. Think about it. Jesus puts Peter in charge of his church and 3 verses later calls him Satan!

Jesus is setting up a juxtaposition. It is the same conflict that humankind struggles with today.

On the one hand is the spiritual world revealed to man by God.

On the other hand is the secular world driven by the logic and appetites of mankind.

This conflict has several features:

These two worlds views are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true. One of them is wrong.

Using physical facts…….using human logic……..we cannot absolutely prove or, for that matter, disprove either of them.

And yet, ultimately, every last one of us must sort this out.

Ultimately, every last one of us must choose between these two worlds views:

A world, both physical and spiritual, created by and ruled by God.

Or

A physical world that just happened and is run by mankind.

One of these explanations is based on revelation…….given by the creator.

One of these explanations is based on things that mankind has figured out.

In each case, there are parts of the explanation that can be supported by hard historical fact.

In each case, there are parts of the explanation that cannot be proven.

And so we fill in the gaps. The Christian fills the gaps with revelations of the spiritual realm given by our creator…..God. The secular humanist fills the gaps with theories and assumptions given to us primarily by science………and this is built on human logic and observation, which is limited to the physical realm. These theories and assumptions have never been proven. These theories and assumptions are not facts…….not yet……possibly never.

And so we are left hanging.

The most important decision in the world…….in our lifetime.

And it hinges on how we weigh two imponderables:

The revelation of the spiritual world given by our creator

Or

The explanation of the physical world based on unproven……likely unprovable……theories and assumptions.

Ultimately, this decision comes down to trust.

You can trust the creator…….or you can trust the theories and assumptions…….given to you by the scientists………the same people who told Columbus that the world was flat…….the same people who told Copernicus that the earth was the center of the universe.

The clock is running.