tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87481708525380986562024-03-13T21:17:53.563-07:00What Athol Wrote...about lifeAthol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-30043266228181525302011-10-28T17:35:00.001-07:002011-10-28T17:43:55.040-07:00The Opposite of Art - Excerpt From Chapter 14<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_e8IBLH-bM/TqtKiVONe8I/AAAAAAAAAkA/lW94KwZLe8E/s1600/The%2BOpposite%2Bof%2BArt%2B-%2Bsmall%2Bthumbnail.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_e8IBLH-bM/TqtKiVONe8I/AAAAAAAAAkA/lW94KwZLe8E/s200/The%2BOpposite%2Bof%2BArt%2B-%2Bsmall%2Bthumbnail.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5668706509648657346" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" >As he had beneath the Sistine ceiling, Ridler paced the sidewalk. </span></b>Back and forth beside the looming ramparts, he paced. All the years swirled through his mind, the cost of jungles, beaches, filthy alleys and bazaars, tortured and exploded, hungry, parched, lonely and alone, and of course Suzanna. Suzanna lost forever. He had surrendered everything to paint the Glory, trying it a thousand times, a thousand ways, miles of paint, gallons of it flowing across canvas by the acre. What were these imposters' feeble efforts compared to sacrifice like his?<br /><br />"I'll show them," he muttered, dropping to his knees and opening his backpack. "I'll show them."<br /><br />Removing his kit he spilled his pastels out onto the sidewalk. Still muttering, he selected a piece of chalk and began to sketch. His arm swung broadly over the pavement, a giant motion from the shoulder. Line after sweeping, monumental line arched across the slates around him. He was no mere artist. He was an athlete, a zealot and a warrior. He was no propagandist. He was a partisan, a dogmatist in possession of all truth. He alone could show the Glory to the world, and he alone would do it.<br /><br />Driven by his rage and his disdain, Ridler lost all consciousness of his surroundings. He did not see the crowd gathering about him as his colors rose from the pavement to the ancient ramparts of the Holy See. He did not hear their whispers, nor their gasps and exclamations as the image swelled and spread. He climbed the wall with only fingertips and the narrow edges of his boots, clinging to the bricks stacked earthy and steadfast for generations. Halfway up he released his hold and drifted. Gripping colored chalk in both of his hands, he drew with unerring beauty and precision on his left and right at once, a whirlwind of pristine intention, filling empty voids as if he was a witch conjuring a portal to a future or a past. He almost had it now. This time he would hold it fast. He would draw back the veil. He would reveal the Glory. He would not let it go. He would master everything.<br /><br />Ridler drew among a cloud of witnesses. No carabinieri stepped forward from that growing crowd to protest on behalf of public property. On the contrary, the police in their white belts and chest straps stood entranced along with bankers and tourists, priests and beggars. Dozens of them turned to hundreds; hundreds turned to thousands. From the street and sidewalk, from the windows, balconies, and rooftops, all of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city> observed in breathless silence.<br /><br />It never crossed the artist's mind that he might run out of colors. Again and again he pulled more pastels from his pack, never realizing it had become a cornucopia, endlessly fertile, providing everything required. Nothing was withheld. The sun itself beyond the angry clouds did not betray him. On the contrary, it remained aloft long past the normal hour, granting the suspension of time. Even gravity and space surrendered, all created things in all directions bowing in submission to his genius.<br /><br />In the end it seemed the only limit was himself, for when he stopped it was his own decision. Hands and arms and clothing choked with color, Ridler sat back on his haunches. At that very moment the sun began to move again above the clouds, but it took a while to regain its usual velocity. And like the fading of the day, Ridler's own return was gradual, a slow recognition of the image spread out all around him. Shadows gathering, he gazed upon the work.<br /><br />It covered half a block along the sidewalk. It climbed forty feet up the wall. It was of course his grandest effort, superior to anything that <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city> had ever seen. Thousands knelt around the fringes, hands clasped at their chins, palms turned up toward heaven. Their whispered prayers combined and interlaced in midair, flowing hot across his face. Their adoration of the image plucked him to his feet as if he were a puppet pulled by strings. He disappeared into them, staggering with painful joints, fleeing yet another failure, for he was well aware that this was merely one more flawed beginning. As he had so many times before, he had reached the end of Ridler without capturing the Glory.</p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Opposite-Art-Novel-Athol-Dickson/dp/1416583483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319848765&sr=8-1">Click here to buy a copy of <i>The Opposite of Art</i></a></span></div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-62010423237956651852011-05-27T10:33:00.000-07:002011-10-19T06:21:01.287-07:00LOVE WINS - A Review<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fGS_N984_70/Td_vkMumzcI/AAAAAAAAAhE/Raiffxro3Aw/s1600/Sea%2BGiving%2BUp%2Bthe%2BDead%2B-%2B052711.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 144px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fGS_N984_70/Td_vkMumzcI/AAAAAAAAAhE/Raiffxro3Aw/s400/Sea%2BGiving%2BUp%2Bthe%2BDead%2B-%2B052711.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5611467065897962946" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">I finally got down</span> to Rob Bell’s book in my reading list, and I finished it this week. The first thing you notice about <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006204964X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=daily0e8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=006204964X">Love Wins</a></i> is it’s not written for pastors, elders, or Bible teachers; it’s written for that guy sitting next to you in traffic, the one who hardly ever thinks about religion.<br /><br />Parts of the book are arranged on the page like poetry, one short incomplete sentence stacked over another, and sometimes each line is<br />just<br />one<br />word.<br /><br />It’s often difficult to draw firm conclusions about specific ideas from poetry, so it’s not easy to do that with <i>Love Wins</i>. Rob often seems to say one thing here, and the opposite thing there. To some extent I think that’s intentional. A major thesis of the book is the fact that we know far less about God and the hereafter than we often pretend to know. In a way then, Rob’s style demonstrates his thesis.<br /><br />If you’ve read the “Yes and Yes” chapter in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587430487/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=daily0e8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=158743048">The Gospel according to Moses</a></i>, you know I believe the proper response to the apparent contradictions in the Bible is not to take a stand one way or the other, but rather to say “Yes,” to both halves of the paradox. Rob says exactly the same thing, on page 127.<br /><br />While some may object to this as an affront to the intellect or a copout on important doctrine, it’s just as reasonable to view it as a proof of faith. After all, who has more faith: the one who insists he must understand everything in the Bible, or the one who believes God is big enough to make sense out of two apparently contradictory propositions?<br /><br />So far, so good. And I especially endorse Rob’s take on heaven, which he presents not as something to be reached in the afterlife, but rather as a way of being, which starts here in this life for believers. It is, I think, a perfectly orthodox interpretation of the scriptures. Salvation is not a single choice to be made and then relied upon thereafter. On the contrary, Paul presents salvation as something we must <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil%202:12-13&version=NIV">"work out . . . with fear and trembling"</a> throughout this part of our immortal lives. And Jesus didn’t teach us to pray “Let us come into thy kingdom when we die.” Rather, it was “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth [right here, right now] . . .”<br /><br />Rob’s perspective on heaven as a state of existence in the present world has vital ramifications for how one lives today. It’s the difference between a Christian who leaves his religion in the pews when he walks out of church on Sunday, and a Christian who loves his neighbor with actions, all day every day. When you carry heaven in your heart, it’s much easier to be heavenly.<br /><br />Several other points Rob makes in <i>Love Wins</i> deserve praise. I appreciated Rob's effort to expand his reader's thinking about how faith in Jesus leads to a loving relationship with God, and about who enters heaven. Like Rob, I believe many Christians are going to be very surprised at the company they'll keep in the hereafter. And again, there are strong parallels between much of what he wrote and <i>The Gospel according to Moses</i>. I'd love to go into more detail about this and other helpful points he made, but space is limited here, so I want to pass from praise to the one concern I had when I put down the book.<br /><br />Like so many others, I'm worried about Rob’s perspective on hell.<br /><br />In many places, it seems to me Rob says hell is a temporary condition, a teaching tool God uses to convince those who pass out of this life unconvinced.<br /><br />Note my language, please. When I write, “it seems to me,” that’s because I can’t be sure. Again, this book is written like a poem, and different people may get many different meanings from the same line in a poem. On page 117 for example, Rob seems to say if we choose hell, then God will let us have hell. Rob doesn’t limit that statement in any way. He doesn't say God will only let us stay in hell a little while, for example. But the over-arcing sense I got from this book was of a hell that’s not really “hell” in the traditional sense of the word, because as Rob writes on page 86, “there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever.”<br /><br />Unless I completely misunderstood Rob, he thinks hell is temporary. That idea is repeated in many places, across several chapters. Eventually, everybody suffering in hell will see the light, and enter God’s presence.<br /><br />Rob quotes many scriptures to support this idea. Unfortunately his scholarship is often deeply flawed. He sometimes quotes a verse to make a point, when the prior verse in the scriptures makes exactly the opposite point. He even goes so far as to quote the first half of a verse without mentioning the second half, when the second half refutes his interpretation of the first.<br /><br />Here’s just one example, although I could offer many others:<br /><br />On page 91 Rob discusses Jesus’ famous teaching about two kinds of people: 1) those who try to take care of the hungry, thirsty, alien, naked, sick and imprisoned, and; 2) those who don’t. At the conclusion of that passage, in Matthew 25:46, Jesus compares the fate of those two kinds of people. He says:<br /><br /><i>"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."</i><br /><br />Rob writes about two Greek words in the verse, but rather than examining the words Jesus actually used, Rob focuses on the roots of those words. It’s as if a Chinese student learning English applied the meaning of the word “finite” to the sentence “The universe is infinite.”<br /><br />Based on that approach, Rob concludes that the word usually translated as "punishment" should actually be rendered "trimming" or "pruning," and the word usually translated as "eternal" should instead be understood to mean "a period of time." So he suggests the first half of Matthew 25:46 should be translated this way: “Then they will go away to a period of pruning . . .” He then moves on without mentioning the second half of the verse.<br /><br />That omission is understandable, when one considers that the word “eternal” in both halves of the verse is the same word in the Greek. Had Rob translated that word in the second half the same way he translated it in the first, he would have had this to explain away:<br /><br /><i>“Then they will go away to </i>a period of <i>pruning, but the righteous to </i>a period of <i>life.”</i><br /><br />"A period of" life is not what a believer hopes to experience in the hereafter, of course, nor is it what the Bible teaches, either about heaven, or about hell. The actual Greek word Jesus used is unmistakable: it means everlasting, eternal, or forever.<br /><br />Some compare Rob’s apparent theology on hell to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, but it is a flawed comparison. <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm">Purgatory,</a> in the Catholic sense, is a place where believers who die in a state of grace suffer appropriate punishment for their venal sins, a process which completes their sanctification and allows them to enter God’s holy presence.<br /><br />Whatever one may think of that theology, purgatory is not a place where people who reject God in this life have a second chance at faith along the lines Rob seems to suggest. Roman Catholicism, like traditional Protestant theology, is quite clear: those who die without accepting God’s grace in this life pass directly to eternal suffering in hell.<br /><br />Now, having written those terrible words, I also want to be clear on one thing: I wish Rob was right.<br /><br />I wish the Bible taught that there will be an infinite number of chances to confess, repent, and step into our loving God’s embrace. I wish the Lord would give us an eternity to make that choice, if necessary. I wish the Bible didn’t say, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=heb%209:27-28&version=NIV">“. . . man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”</a> I wish it didn’t say, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%203:16-21&version=NIV">“. . . whoever does not believe stands condemned already.”</a> I wish Jesus hadn’t warned us the day will come when he will say once and for all, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mt%2025:41-46&version=NIV">“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,”</a> and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mt%207:13-23&version=NIV">“Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”</a><br /><br />But the Bible is consistent about this: after this life come a eternity in hell or heaven for us all. The choice of where we’ll be is ours, and the time to make that choice is now, because when we leave this part of life, our fate in the next is sealed.<br /><br />While I wish it wasn’t that way, who am I to protest that this isn’t fair or just? After all, God is God, and I am not. A slug might as well complain to me about pesticide. As God himself explains, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa%2055:6-9&version=NIV">"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”</a> Who am I to explain ideas like love, mercy and justice to God, the one who merely spoke, and galaxies sprang into existence?<br /><br />Still, I wish it wasn’t that way.<br /><br />I read an old story somewhere recently (it may have been Adam Clarke's excellent Bible commentary, or perhaps Barnes), about two preachers discussing their sermons the previous Sunday. One says he preached on the topic of hell. The other asks, “And did you cry?”<br /><br />That is how any true follower of Jesus feels about hell. To live in heaven on earth is to live with a broken heart for the lost on earth. Along with Rob, I would never presume to say Gandhi is in hell. “Judge not, or you will be judged” means such awful words are for God alone to speak. And I certainly don’t revel in the thought of people in eternal torment. On the contrary, I weep.<br /><br />But because my heart does break at the thought of hell, the last thing in the world I want to do is write a book that lets an unbelieving reader think she can ignore Jesus in this life, because there will be (or even might be) a chance to set things right in the next.<br /><br />Is that what Rob Bell believes? Or might believe? Even after reading and re-reading <i>Love Wins</i>, I still don’t know for sure. And that is precisely the problem.<br /><br />There is a difference between speaking judgmentally about specific people, and speaking truth about God’s coming judgment. The judgmental aspect of Jesus' relationship to creation is very clearly written in God's word, because it would not be just, or loving, to be vague about a thing like that.<br /><br />Sometimes the most difficult and uncomfortable things must be spoken very carefully and clearly, if love is really going to win.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-37712968861497899962011-05-17T06:16:00.000-07:002012-06-16T15:59:46.320-07:00River Rising - Deleted Scene<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4eYy2GPEXM/TdKToOhwx2I/AAAAAAAAAg0/NGvd4M1QfCo/s1600/Swamp%2B-%2B051711.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607706805333444450" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4eYy2GPEXM/TdKToOhwx2I/AAAAAAAAAg0/NGvd4M1QfCo/s400/Swamp%2B-%2B051711.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 148px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 144px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 180%;">While looking for something else</span> this morning, I came across this scene, which got cut from <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076420338X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=daily0e8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=076420338X">River Rising</a> </i>early in the editing process. In honor of the poor folks in the parishes around Baton Rouge and New Orleans today who are once again suffering from a flood, I thought I'd publish it here, as a reminder that miracles do happen, and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%2013:6-7&version=NIV">"love . . . always hopes, always perseveres."</a><br />
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Visualize relentless rain falling on a slave plantation beside the Mississippi, and a great flood about to crest the levees . . .</div>
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Lying on the moist soil of her shack, Marah smelled something in the air. Smoke? She took a tiny bite of hard tack and chewed it slowly, drawing it out, making it last. Yes, wood smoke. Someone had built a fire inside their doorway, she supposed; maybe had a little dry kindling stored away, and decided a hot meal would be worth putting up with tearful eyes and ticklish lungs. She too would rather suffer a smoke-filled room than endure the cold comfort of another meal like this. But she had not had the foresight to gather wood from along the overgrown sides of the levees and store it indoors. She envied them. She took another bite. All too soon her little piece of bread was gone. Time to milk the goat. One of the other women had fed the last of yesterday’s milk to the baby a little while ago. The child would be crying for more in the middle of the night. Marah rose to her feet and paused before the door, staring out into the rain. Strange, this rain. It had gone on like this for a day and a half now, never faster, never slower, no lightning or thunder, just strong, steady rain coming down so straight it hung outside the doorway like a curtain. Wrapping her arms across her chest to clutch her elbows for warmth, Marah ducked her head and stepped outside.</div>
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The rain hit her neck and rolled down her back. She made no effort to avoid the puddles as she walked, for the puddles were everywhere, and getting deeper. Wading right through, she followed the beaten path along the front of the shacks, heading for the small pen back behind. She did not look up. She knew the way so well there was no need. Besides, what would she see but pitch black? Holding her head down, facing the ground, was the best way to avoid the pounding rain. So when the light appeared at the edge of her vision and she raised up, Marah was already very near the fire that Newboy had somehow built. It roared and danced with life as if celebrating something joyful. Newboy stood on the other side gazing into a pot that hung above the flames. The warm light bathed his features with a yellow glow. His skin glistened. He stood perfectly still. The rain, falling into the flames, crackled and rose again as waves of steam that almost obscured him.</div>
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For a moment Marah thought he might be a vision. The fire might be a vision, too. How could anyone build a fire in this rain? How would you get the first tiny flame to catch and hold? And where would you get the dry wood? It was impossible. Yet there it was—there he was—somehow.</div>
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How?</div>
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Forgetting the goat, Marah walked closer. The warmth of the flames caressed her, made her feel almost comfortable again. Stepping into the circle of firelight cast around about, she got Newboy’s attention. He looked up at her across the fire and smiled. Suddenly she felt comfortable on the inside, too.</div>
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“Want some stew?” he asked.</div>
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Unconsciously she touched her stomach. “Sure.”</div>
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“I think it’s ready. Help yourself.”</div>
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“What’s in it?”</div>
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His smile widened. “Does it matter?”</div>
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She laughed and knelt and dipped one of the wooden bowls lying there into the pot and up it came, rich with vegetables and meat and smelling of heaven. She watched Newboy over the edge of the bowl as she drank from it.</div>
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“Good?” he asked.</div>
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She nodded and kept on drinking and chewing, following his every move as he turned from the fire and went to the nearest shack. Sticking his head inside he called, “Hey! Got some stew out here for them that wants it.”</div>
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The stew was better than good. It had a peculiar, delicate flavor. Tilting the bowl toward the fire she saw small floating green and rust colored flecks. Had Newboy somehow found spices? She sighed with pleasure. They had not even had salt in…how long? Since before the last planting season for sure. Maybe even the one before that. Yet here he was coming up with these delicious spices.</div>
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How?</div>
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Newboy moved on to the next shack, where he poked his head in and offered another invitation to come out and eat some stew. Moving on again, he was soon too far away for Marah to see him in the darkness and the rain, but she heard his muffled voice and knew he had continued, all the way down the line. What was he thinking? The pot was far too small for everyone. It held enough for maybe six or eight at most. And already the three women living in the first shack had emerged. Marah giggled as their eyes went wide at the sight of her kneeing in the rain beside a roaring fire, eating stew. Had she looked that way at Newboy when she walked up? The women approached slowly, each of them clutching a bowl made from a gourd. Marah rose to give them room as they clustered around the pot. Her own bowl was almost empty. Strangely, that one serving had been enough to fill her belly. But even though the stew was mighty filling, there would never be enough for everyone.</div>
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Now others gathered around the fire. To Marah’s surprise, nobody pushed or shoved. Everyone made room for those who came behind. Even Qana waited his turn. Marah supposed it was the shock of seeing the fire that kept them civil. What else could it be? She saw Newboy take his place on the far side of the fire, just where he had stood before when she walked up. Steam rose and fell in waves as he watched the others dip their gourds and hand carved bowls into the pot. Sometimes the steam almost obscured him. Sometimes it parted and she could see him clearly. The others did not seem to notice that he did not eat. Maybe he had eaten earlier, before Marah came along. One or two people thanked him as they passed along beside the pot. Most did not. No matter what, he smiled at one and all in a way that made her certain that he did not care about their thanks so much as he did about their bellies.</div>
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Qana had gone through the line twice before it finally occurred to Marah that the pot was not yet empty. How could that be? There were so many of them, and some had already taken two helpings, yet each hand that dipped a bowl into that small pot raised it up again filled to the brim. Could Newboy have refilled it in an instant of concealment by the rising steam? Could anyone move that quickly? And if so, where did he hide the raw materials? And the fire…she had not seen him add a log, yet it still burned. No longer did she marvel that the fire had been started in this rain. Now she marveled that it kept on burning. There was no pile of logs waiting to be burned. And the air was filled with falling water. No fire could burn in such a rain. Looking around, Marah wondered: did no one else see these things? How could they not? How could they simply eat and see nothing but the bowls they cradled in their hands as if to protect them from each other?</div>
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Was she the only one with eyes?</div>
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</div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-75626599783964698582011-03-07T13:03:00.000-08:002011-03-08T08:27:22.070-08:00Love Wins . . . Unless You Are Rob Bell<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ec1dTDi6xD0/TXVK5db1I6I/AAAAAAAAAf8/3dJCYMfG7Iw/s1600/Love%2BWins%2BCover%2B-%2B020511.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581449664209953698" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 129px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ec1dTDi6xD0/TXVK5db1I6I/AAAAAAAAAf8/3dJCYMfG7Iw/s400/Love%2BWins%2BCover%2B-%2B020511.gif" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Rob Bell is at it again.</span> He has never shied away from controversy, and apparently his new book, <em>Love Wins</em>, is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/us/05bell.html">no exception</a>. With the book not yet even released, already such stalwart evangelicals as Albert Mohler and John Piper are calling it heretical. An executive with a Christian publishing company, Justin Taylor, was apparently an early voice in the outrage against what Rob Bell <em>might</em> have written. (Taylor says on his blog, “I have not read all of Bell’s book, though I have read some chapters that were sent to me. . . . I think that the publisher’s description combined with Bell’s video is sufficient evidence to suggest that he thinks hell is empty and that God’s love (which desires all to be saved) is always successful.”) Speaking as a novelist and non-fiction author, I'm surprised a man with Mr. Taylor's background in publishing would assume Rob Bell had total control over his publisher's advertising copy. It's possible, of course, but I could tell several disaster stories to demonstrate it ain't necessarily so, and I'll bet Mr. Taylor could, too. Take the <a href="https://www.robbell.com/lovewins/">trailer</a> for <em>Love Wins</em> as an example. Are we expected to believe that Rob deliberately set out to do an <a href="http://www.addamsfamily.com/addams/f_charge.jpg">Uncle Fester</a> imitation? Surely that sweater was some publicist's decision.<strong> </strong>(Sorry Rob.)<br /><strong><span style="color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">Rather than basing a response on what the man's <em>publisher</em> wrote, unlike Justin and Al and John I think I’ll wait until I read what <em>Rob</em> wrote before I pronounce judgment from on high.<br /></span><br /></span></strong>That said, the trailer does make it seem like Rob’s upcoming book will take on some tough questions about salvation. What is it, exactly? How is it made possible? Bell’s video asks if Gandhi is in hell, and he asks if we have the right to say so. Again, since the book is not yet out, everything is speculation, but it seems like Rob intends to explore the ideas of heaven and hell, and how we get to one or the other, and he intends to look at it a bit more broadly than Drs. Mohler and Piper might prefer. So what’s the problem exactly?<br /><br />The Bible does clearly state that many of us are bound for hell. I hope Rob agrees with that, because if he doesn’t, then he has indeed stepped far outside of Biblical truth. Where there is much room for debate, however, is exactly what the Bible says about how to get to heaven. Fortunately, there is a core set of beliefs that virtually no evangelical Christian will dispute. They have been famously explained this way:<br /><strong><span style="color:#000000;"><ol><li>God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life;</span></li><br /><li>All of us sin, and our sin has separated us from God; </li><br /><li>Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through him we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our life; </li><br /><li>We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s plan for our lives.</strong></li></ol><p>These are Bill Bright’s famous “<a href="http://www.ccci.org/how-to-know-god/would-you-like-to-know-god-personally/index.htm">Four Spiritual Laws</a>,” and as I mentioned, they are universally believed in the evangelical community, as far as they go. But some evangelicals go further. Whereas Bill Bright said, “We must . . . receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord” some insist we must also add, “. . . and receive him by that name precisely, and consciously and deliberately believe in the historical details of his crucifixion and resurrection as a person who was both fully man and fully God.”<br /><br />I suspect we would find Al Mohler, John Piper and Justin Taylor firmly in this camp. Theologians call it “Exclusivism.” At the opposite end of the theological spectrum is “Universalism,” which holds that God’s love and His desire that none should perish means everyone will go to heaven, and hell is empty (except perhaps for the odd demon). This is what Rob Bell has been accused of, but those doing the accusing seem to think there’s nothing in-between these two positions. If so, they could not be more wrong.<br /><br />I wrote a chapter on the territory in-between in my memoir, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587430487?ie=UTF8&tag=daily0e8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1587430487">The Gospel according to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=daily0e8-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1587430487" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br /> </em> As part of the companion study guide, I collected a few quotes by other famous fundamentalist evangelical theologians on this subject. You can <a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/files/13_-_Famous_Christians_on_Inclusivism.pdf">read those quotes here</a>, and I strongly suggest that you pause a moment now, and go do it. You may not know me, or have any reason to believe what I write here, but I promise you will be familiar with many of the sources of those quotes.<br /><br />All of the great Christians quoted in the study guide would disagree with the idea that a person cannot enter into a healthy relationship with God without—regardless of circumstances—first expressing faith or belief in the historical details of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God/man. Given that, some might wonder if these men are saying it wasn’t necessary for Jesus to suffer and die on the cross. Do they believe Jesus could have simply examined our hearts’ intentions and decided if we were worthy for salvation based on that, without all the torture and the blood?<br /><br />It’s a natural question to ask, and based on everything we know about these men, I think we have to answer, no, they all believed exactly the same things every evangelical Christian believes about the reason, purpose, effectiveness and exclusivity of the cross and empty tomb. We get a hint of this when we zero in on a few of those quotes:<br /><br />"...elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated, and saved by Christ..." (Westminster Confession of Faith)<br /><br />"...all salvation is through Jesus..." (C.S. Lewis)<br /><br />”...anyone thus saved would learn in the next world that he was saved through Christ." (J.I. Packer)<br /><br />They're saying salvation--all salvation--is by grace through faith in Jesus alone. We know these men aren’t <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/universalism">Universalists</a>. None of them think Buddha or Vishnu or Allah saves. All of them believe every soul in heaven got there in "one way" only: through the mercy and justice of the cross. They would point to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=heb%2011:1-16&version=NIV">Hebrews 11</a> as one proof of this (the part that teaches that all the OT believers were saved through faith in a future event--the cross--even though “they did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance”). These men would say the crucifixion was essential, because it was not a mere symbol but was instead an objective fact, an effective and direct Divine intervention in history, by which the potential for justice was actually reestablished in our relationship with God, and a genuine process set in motion which will one day also reestablish all the laws of nature in the universe as they were originally created to be.<br /><br />So that's not the question they’re dealing with. Instead, they want to know this: if we say we must have faith in the historical details of the crucifixion and resurrection in order to be saved--if we must consciously assent not only to the "Four Spiritual Laws" but also to the full scriptural detail behind them--then what do we believe about the countless people who have lived and died without hearing and/or understanding those specifics of the Good News? </p><p><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Do we believe every infant who ever died is in hell? Every adult with a baby's mind? Every American Indian before Columbus? Every person who lived before 33 AD?<br /><br /></strong></span>Of course most Christians have had this conversation many times, and most of us would say, no, the God we love would find a way to save such people. But then we must ask, on what basis does He save them? That is where most of us throw up our hands and answer simply, "God will find a way," but the men I quoted are a bit braver than most, and tried to take it deeper.<br /><br />Think of stories we've heard about missionaries who encounter people in the deepest jungles and tell them the Gospel, only to learn those people already somehow believe in a God who died for them. In these missionaries' stories, the jungle people are delighted to learn the real name of their God, "Jesus", but what if one of these people who previously believed in a strange “God-who-died-for-us” had passed away the day before the missionaries arrived? She knew some of the facts—the substitutionary sacrifice part—but would she have gone to hell because she died without hearing that God’s name, Jesus, or the fact that he was both fully God and fully man? In other words, must she know all of the historical details, or are only some of them enough? And if only some, which ones, exactly?<br /><br />We believe those missionaries' stories, and stories about Muslims meeting Jesus in their dreams and so forth, because we believe in miracles. But are those stories really about paranormal miracles, or do we think such revelations are completely normal? Do we think God somehow tells everyone on earth the historical details of the gospel before they die? No child dies in Pakistan until they know it? Every mother in the Amazon? Every man in the mountains of Tibet already knows all the historical details of the Gospel? The Bible does say everyone is "<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ro%201:20-25&version=NIV">without excuse</a>" because of God's self-revelation through the glory of creation, but does that passage also mean God has revealed the full story of the crucifixion to everyone? If so, if God would never let anyone die without first revealing the historical facts behind the Gospel, miraculously if necessary, why would Jesus command us to go throughout the world and spread the Gospel? And if we don’t believe God reveals the full Gospel to everyone, if there are unreached people on the earth who die in ignorance of it, does that mean those people will suffer in eternal fire forever?<br /><br />Or could it be that some of those people--probably only a few because the gate is narrow for us all—could some of them in total ignorance of the facts of the Passion nonetheless see the Lord around them in creation's glory and recognize the truth of what they see, and reject the worship of “images” even as they sense the utter impossibility of climbing up to such a holy God as that, and fall on their face in utter desperation, filled with love and desiring nothing for themselves except a relationship with the One they love, offering themselves completely to a Mystery they long to know, and begging Him to have mercy on them, to find a way to climb down to them instead, to let them simply love Him and be loved by Him? </p><p><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">If someone prayed that way, yet died in ignorance of the cross, how would Jesus Christ respond? That is the real question.<br /></span></strong><br />Quoting one of many similar <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2014:6&version=NIV">verses</a> ("No one comes to the Father except by me") some devoted Christians believe Jesus would still condemn such a person to hell, because after all, if God had wanted such a person to be saved, surely He could have found a way to speak the historical details of the Gospel into that person's mind. Plus of course, He is God, and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa%2045:7-10&version=NIV">quoting this perhaps</a>, some say who are we to question His decisions? And I think every true Christian would agree God could indeed reveal every detail to everyone before they die, if that were God's intention, and God does indeed have every right to do with everyone exactly as He wills.<br /><br />But other Christians—equally devoted—pointing elsewhere in the same scriptures think God has already <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%2018:12-14&version=NIV">made His preference known</a>, and He desires us all to live with him if we only will. They believe God might choose to save the person I described above, and do it on the basis of the cross, even though the person does not know the cross exists. Fine Christian men like Justin Martyr, C.S. Lewis, J.I. Packer, John Stott, and Billy Graham might suggest it is not the historical fact of the cross which saves us; it is the One who used the cross to change history. They might point to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james%202:19-24&version=NIV">James's famous statement</a> that even demons believe, and shudder. They might mention that throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus was much more concerned with <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mt%2015:1-20&version=NIV">the content of the human heart</a> than he was with religious belief systems. And they might ask, what does "except by me" mean, primarily? Does it mainly mean "except by knowledge of a Jewish carpenter?" Or from looking at <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2014:6-7&version=NIV">the very next verse</a>, might it much more likely mean, "except by the intercession of the second Person of the Trinity?" (I say “mainly” because of course, Jesus was both, but can it really follow that one must understand that fact in order to be saved? And if so, are we all lost, for which of us really understands it?)<br /><br />In short, some Christians think we’re saved by <em><strong>what</strong></em> we know; others think we’re saved by <em><strong>who</strong></em> we know, but one thing is for sure: if any Christian wants to accuse another of heresy over this, then they’re going to have to include men like John Wesley, John Stott, Justin Martyr, Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis among the heretics. Given such a cloud of witnesses, personally I think it’s much wiser to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev%2012:10-12&version=NIV">leave the accusations to Satan</a>, who loves to do such things, and admit that I don't know the mind of God on such a matter.<br /><br />Finally, given all of this the usual next question is, "In that case, why bother to evangelize?" and the answer is: 1) because it helps our neighbors to draw closer to the Lord through deeper knowledge about the sacrificial nature of His love for them, and; 2) because Jesus Christ commanded it. Either should be more than enough motivation for any Christian.<br /><br />I have no idea what Rob Bell has written about all of this. If he did believe in a God who doesn’t care about justice, who allows unrepentant Hitlers to live forever in heaven alongside repentant saints, then I do think he would be horribly wrong, and worse than wrong, I think he would be in grave spiritual danger himself for leading many people astray. I also think he will be in grave spiritual danger if his new book does teach Universalism, because that doctrine is not Biblical, and leads to damning complacency among its adherents. But I don’t know that Rob believes any of that. Neither do Albert Mohler, or John Piper, or Justin Taylor. And oh, how I wish we Christians would learn not to attack a brother (in <em>The New York Times,</em> no less!) before we know it’s absolutely necessary. </p><p>So far in this matter, the only things we know for sure are these: 1) there have indeed been famous pastors behaving poorly, and; 2) they have not been Rob Bell.<br /></p>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-40601049584570369552011-03-01T07:18:00.000-08:002011-03-01T08:11:19.535-08:00Shall We Dance?<em>Every now and then I have a chance to preach at my church. Last Sunday, I spoke about Proverbs 8, and the Trinity. If you're a Christian, can you explain why the idea that our Lord exists as three Persons is the most important thing we Christians know, except for the cross and empty tomb? It's strange, but many of us can't. I wonder why we spend so little time thinking and talking about it . . .<br /></em><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pidd2EWIawQ/TW0PFJZS4HI/AAAAAAAAAf0/xwmBksCbHwk/s1600/Three%2BCandles%2B-%2B030111.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579132094477688946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 256px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pidd2EWIawQ/TW0PFJZS4HI/AAAAAAAAAf0/xwmBksCbHwk/s400/Three%2BCandles%2B-%2B030111.jpg" border="0" /></a>I’m in awe of Proverbs 8.</span> All of the scriptures are sacred, of course, but today we’re moving onto truly holy ground. Today we’re going to glimpse what it’s like to be the Creator of the universe. And along with awe, I feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude, because today’s passage proves my Heavenly Father wants me to know as much about Him as my little mind can understand. I think there’s only one reason why the Creator would bother to reveal Himself this way: He loves me—and all of you—very much, and like all lovers, He wants to be known. So let’s begin in Proverbs 8:<br /><br /><em>1 Does not wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice? 2 On the heights beside the way, in the paths she takes her stand; 3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: 4 "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the sons of men.”<br /></em><br />Proverbs 7 shows us secrecy is the enemy of relationships. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%207:7-20&version=NIV">There</a>, the wicked woman goes out into the street to find the wayward young man, but she wants him to come alone back to her house. She says, “It’s okay, my husband isn’t home. This will be our little secret.” But here in 8:4 we see wisdom is different. Wisdom calls to all humanity, all the sons of men. You can also see this in verses 15 & 16.<br /><br /><em>15 By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; 16 by me princes rule, and nobles govern the earth. 17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.<br /></em><br />So wisdom works at the most highly visible human level, among kings and rulers. Wickedness operates in secret, destroying relationships and community, but wisdom stands out in the open, calling to everyone, guiding entire nations. And if you look at the very end of chapter 7, you see wickedness comes at a high cost. In the end, it costs <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%207:26-27&version=NIV">everything</a>.<br /><br />But now look at verse 17 in chapter 8. Wisdom says <em>“Those who seek me find me.”</em> And why is that? The answer is also right there in 17. God loves those who love him. Folly says come home with me, and I’ll show you a secret. You’ll find peace and joy through what you know. Wisdom also offers peace and joy, but out in the open. Wisdom says it’s not what you know, but who you know. God wants to be known. <em>“I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” </em>Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 7:7. <em>“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”<br /><br /></em><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>So this is one way we can know we’re approaching the true Master of the Universe, and not a cheap little imitation: The one true God keeps no secrets. </strong></span><br /><br />On the contrary, again and again Jesus implores us to listen and believe. <em>“Verily, verily I say unto you,”</em> he says, over and over, begging us to hear the plain truth of his teaching. And why does he bother? Again, because God loves us very much, and like all lovers, God wants to be known.<br /><br />Back in Matthew 7, right after promising that those who seek will find, Jesus also says, <em>“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”</em> Notice how Jesus says ask and it will be <em>given</em>. Your Father in heaven will <em>give</em> good gifts. Wicked secrets have a cost, but God’s wisdom is free, at least for you and me.<br /><br />Of course as Christians we know wisdom is free, but justice is not. Justice <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dt%2019:16-21&version=NIV">requires </a>an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The vast wisdom of God’s love, and the forgiveness which proves God’s love, is openly available to everyone, a standing offer at no cost to us, because Jesus already paid the price for it on the cross.<br /><br />On the night before his crucifixion, they took Jesus prisoner and asked him questions, hoping he would say something they could use against him. In John 18:21-22 He answered: <em>"I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.”<br /><br /></em>Jesus said nothing in secret. Wisdom calls out in the streets. True love keeps no secrets. God wants to be known. Over and over again, Jesus freely and openly explains the way to peace and joy in life. Over and over again he says simply, “believe.”<br /><br />Jesus <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:27-29&version=NIV">says</a>, <em>"The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."</em><br /><br />He <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2011:21-26&version=NIV">says</a>, <em>"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."</em><br /><br />And one of the most famous things Jesus ever said is in John 3:16: <em>“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.”<br /><br /></em>To some of us, this just seems too easy. Here we are, wondering how to connect with the Creator of light and time and molecules and black holes, and Jesus says, “Just believe”? Some of us feel there must be more mystery than that. More to know.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Just believe? It can’t be that simple. And I agree. I do agree. On one level, I think that’s far too simple.<br /></strong></span><br />If we understood the slightest bit about what we’re really doing here today, talking and thinking about this vast Presence who not only fills the entire universe, but also exists somehow outside of time and space in a way we can’t begin to imagine, if we could fully know the smallest fact about God’s actual state of existence, then I think we’d have to agree that entering a loving relationship with Him is, at the very least, mysterious. And to solve a mystery, you must understand it. So why does Jesus say, “Just believe?”<br /><br />To begin to understand this, I think we have to press closer to the sacred territory I mentioned at first, the holy ground that begins in Proverbs 8, verse 22.<br /><br /><em>22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; 26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. 27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.<br /><br /></em>If you know the Bible, you’ll feel you’ve heard something very much like these words before, and of course you have. Here are the first few words of the Gospel of John:<br /><br /><em>“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”<br /><br /></em>The apostle Paul also enters this mystery in Colossians 1:15-17, where he says:<br /><br /><em>15 He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.<br /><br /></em>Solomon writes of “creation” and “the beginning” and “kings and rulers” and “wisdom.” John and Paul write of exactly the same things, except instead of “wisdom” John speaks of “the Word,” and Paul comes right out and speaks of “Jesus.” The apostles’ words are so similar to Solomon’s, I really think they must have had this particular Proverb in mind.<br /><br />But what about that language in verse 8:22, where depending on the translation we read phrases like: “The Lord created me,” or “the Lord brought me forth as the firstborn,” or “as the first of His works.” If Solomon is really talking about the second person of the Trinity, as John and Paul seem to think, then this language is a problem, isn’t it? Because as Christians we know Jesus is not the first <em>thing</em> made by the Lord, not a <em>creature</em> created by the Lord; Jesus is <em>the Lord</em>, as Paul wrote in a <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ro%2010:5-13&version=NIV">couple</a> of <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%2012:1-3&version=NIV">places</a>.<br /><br />Some think this means Proverbs 8 is only poetic symbolism. They think it’s strictly about wisdom. But the problem isn’t only here in Proverbs. Remember the Colossians quote I mentioned? Paul calls Jesus “firstborn over all creation.” So we can’t avoid this simply by calling Proverbs 8 a symbolic poem.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">This mystery is too deep for that, and like all mysteries in the Bible, I believe the thing to do is not to turn away from it, or deny it, but rather to press into it, and by doing that, learn more about the Lord. Let’s press in.<br /><br /></span></strong>In Libya today there are mass demonstrations and a cruel government crackdown which some people think may lead to more terrorism. Early in the fourth century another big problem came out of Libya, when a popular teacher named Arius decided this Proverb and Paul’s “firstborn” language means there must have been a time when Christ didn’t exist. Arius also thought it meant Christ and the Father were fundamentally different. This is called the Arian heresy. Even today, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons still teach these mistakes, but they directly contradict what Jesus said about himself. For example, in Jesus <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2010:24-30&version=NIV">said</a>, <em>“I and the Father are one.”</em> And he <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208:52-59&version=NIV">said</a>, <em>“Before Abraham was born, I AM.”</em> Notice that especially: Jesus didn’t say “I was,” but he very specifically said, “I AM,” exactly as God <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%203:13-15&version=NIV">said</a> to Moses from the burning bush.<br /><br />The church fathers three hundred years later responded to the Arian heresy with the <a href="http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm">Nicene Creed</a>, which says:<br /><br /><em>“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father . . .”<br /><br /></em>You could almost call this section of the Nicene Creed a commentary on Proverbs 8. The connection comes in the words, “begotten, not made.” Notice the church fathers are drawing a distinction there. “Begotten, not made.” It’s vital to remember the difference. Birds make nests. Humans make houses. God made the universe. But birds beget birds. Humans beget humans. And God begot God.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>God made the universe, but God begot God. You see? </strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong></strong></span><br />To be made, or created, is very different from being firstborn, or begotten. Something made is fundamentally different from the maker, but something begotten is the same substance as the begetter.<br /><br />So if that word “created” in some translations of Proverbs 8:22 causes all this confusion, why use it? Well, the original Hebrew word is found 85 times in the Old Testament, and in all but three of those places it’s translated as “buy,” or “get,” or “possess.” In fact, this same word is used eleven times where Proverbs says, “Get wisdom.” But in those three remaining places, there is indeed a sense of being born. So a perfect translation would have to use an English word that means get, buy, possess, and born. But there isn’t such a word, is there? So the translators had to make the best of it. Sometimes we say things like, “Alexander Graham Bell is the father of the telephone,” as if an inventor could give birth to an invention. So the translators used “created” because at least that English word more or less sits between the ideas of “being possessed” and “being born.”<br /><br />Personally, I think the New American Bible gives the best translation of verse 22. It reads, “The Lord begot me, the firstborn of His ways.” I think they rendered it that way because it’s closer to the “firstborn” language Paul used, and because it’s closer to Jesus’ own attempt to explain what he is, as God’s “only begotten son.”<br /><br />Now we’ve seen how God begot God, and we’ve seen how important it is to remember that meanings don’t always translate directly from Hebrew into English, but there’s still a mystery, because the Hebrew word in verse 22 does carry both the idea of being born, or “firstborn” as Paul puts it. And of course if something is born, then that is the beginning of it, right? But the Lord has no beginning, and “Jesus is Lord,” as Paul said. So it seems there’s still more to learn by pressing even more deeply into this mystery.<br /><br />Let’s begin with Leo Tolstoy. That famous novelist once said, "One may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also three' - but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense." And I think we have to admit it’s true: those words have no sense.<br /><br />Speaking of nonsense, I always think it’s adorable when a child is just learning to speak and he’s still lapsing into gaa-gaa-goo-goo sometimes, and his mom or dad says, “Use your words, dear.” We get more words as we grow up, but when it comes to some things, aren’t we all still at that gaa-gaa-goo-goo stage?<br /><br />We don’t really have the words to fully explain the taste of water or the smell of air, do we? And when your heart swells with love or soars with a sunset, aren’t you sometimes almost painfully aware of how impossible it is to describe the most important things? Of course you are. We all know this is true. We’ve all lived it. So, getting back to trying to explain how the second person of the Trinity could be firstborn or begotten, let’s not make the foolish mistake of thinking words can be applied to Jesus in the same way they apply to us.<br /><br />God begot God, <em>and</em> God has no beginning or end, therefore God’s only Son is begotten, <em>and</em> he has no beginning and no end.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">This can no more be explained in words than that feeling you get at sunsets, or the way you feel when you watch a loved one sleep, but it’s every bit as true as every sunset, and every bit as true as everyone you love.<br /></span></strong><br />Still, something God put inside us wants to try to understand the Trinity. So, being very careful to remember analogies for God are only made of words, let’s think a moment about fire.<br /><br />When fire appears, it produces flames and light and heat, correct? We have flames, and light, and heat, all three, all in the one thing, fire. But it’s not correct to say the flame was first and the light or heat came second. If there is one fire, there are also always flame and light and heat. Three are produced (or born or created, if you like) out of one, yet all exist at all times. And so it is with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<br /><br />Sort of.<br /><br />We can learn more from the “the Son of God” analogy Jesus himself chose to describe his life with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Think about the fact that it’s impossible to be a child without having had a parent. It’s also impossible to be a parent without a having had a child. This is so important: unless a parent and a child both exist, it isn’t possible for either to exist. I myself have no children, therefore I am not a father. A Son implies a Father. But a Father also implies a Son. You could say they define each other. In a way, you could even say they create each other. So there’s that word “create” again, except it applies in a totally different way to the Godhead.<br /><br />This means if there ever were a time before the Son of God, then there would also have to be a time before the Heavenly Father. Yet God by definition is eternal and never changes. So if God was ever a Father, God was always a Father, and if Jesus was ever God’s only begotten Son, Jesus was always God’s Son, from before his creative works began, exactly as it says in Proverbs 8:22.<br /><br />I think Jesus had a second reason for choosing the Father/Son analogy, and I think from our point of view, it’s much more important. I think he used the Father/Son analogy for the same reason he inspired Solomon to use the lyrical language of Proverbs 8. I think Jesus wants us to think of the Godhead in terms of love.<br /><br />Look at 30 and 31 again: <em>“I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.”<br /></em><br />What a beautiful image! The Father and Son at work together in the fields of the Lord, the Father showing the Son new and wondrous things, and the Son building on His ideas and laughing aloud with delight, and the Son’s delight an absolute delight to the Father, and the two of them, delighting in their mutual delight, and all the universe a profound labor of love because the Son and Father are so joyously in love with each other. It’s, “Look, Father! Look what I just made!” And “Oh, excellent, Son! Do it again!” <em>. . . and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made . . . and the Word became flesh, and dwelled among us.</em> (John 1:1-3 & 14)<br /><br />And just here is where I’m sorely tempted to fall to the ground with awe, because I read Solomon’s words with an overwhelming sense that the curtain outside the Most Holy Place has been lifted just a little, and what I’m peeking through to see is what the physicists like to call the Big Bang, but what really seems to be much more than only that, more like the very source, the center, the cosmic beginning or entry point of all the love that ever was or ever will exist throughout the universe.<br /><br />The history of humanity is one long theology lesson, God revealing facts about Himself as fast as we can absorb them. He used Jews to explain his oneness to the world. He used Christians to reveal his three-in-oneness. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures we see it. Not just here in chapter 8, but also in Proverbs 30:4, where a thousand years before the time of Jesus it asks, <em>“Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, <strong>and the name of his son?</strong> Tell me if you know!”<br /><br /></em>So why don’t Christians spend more time thinking and talking about the Trinity? We really should. It’s the most important thing we know, except for the cross and empty tomb.<br /><br />The Trinity explains why God isn’t an impersonal force that made everything and then withdrew.<br /><br />The Trinity explains why God is personally involved, all the time, in everything.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">The Trinity explains love.<br /><br /></span></strong>The philosopher Martin Buber wrote a little book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/I-Thou-Martin-Buber/dp/0684717255"><em>I and Thou</em></a>. It says we can only exist in one of two ways. Those two ways are “I-It”, or “I-You”. Buber said there is no third way of existing. We are sensory creatures. We are emotional creatures. We are relational creatures. We can’t survive without something or someone to relate to, any more than we could survive without air or water.<br /><br />Most of us don’t understand this. Most of us think we can be just “I”, independent of “You”, or even of “It”. But when we try to do that, what we really enter is the “I-It” way of being. We become our own “it”.<br /><br />This is what happens when we think of ourselves as something to be dulled with alcohol or drugs, or as something to be distracted with sex or work, or something to be gratified with possessions. To try to live only as an “I” is to think of ourselves as some<em>thing </em>about which something must be done. When we do that, we become subhuman. We become “I-It”.<br /><br />But there is also “I-You”. When we are “I-You”, we are outward focused, on the Other. We are truly engaged in the world, unwilling to dull or distract or gratify ourselves because the Other, the You, is too wonderful to miss. It’s frightening sometimes, but “I-You” lives life as life truly is, far out there beyond just I, independent of just I. “I-You” gives itself away, and wonder of wonders, in giving, we receive.<br /><br />But we don’t care about receiving. We are in “I-You”. The focus is not “It” and certainly not “I”. The focus is the Other, the You. In other words, (if you haven’t already figured this out), we are in love.<br /><br />True love requires a “You”. True love must have an Other, in order to exist. You cannot even imagine true love in a vacuum. Remember! <em>True love requires a “You".<br /></em><br />So again, these are our only choices: “I-It”, or “I-You”, because relationship is as essential for survival as air or water. A single “I” is impossible. When we try to live that way, we turn ourselves into “I-It”, or else we go mad, which may be the same thing.<br /><br />God, of course, is different. Unlike any created thing, God requires nothing for his existence. God and God alone exists simply as “I”. This is what God means when Moses asks him, “What should we call you?” and God replies, “I AM.” God is only “I”, or “I AM”. But the Apostle John also said, “God is love,” and remember, true love requires a “You”. It’s impossible to love in a vacuum. But before “the beginning” what Other existed? Before creation, there was only the Creator.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">So because love requires a “You”, and because God is love, and because there was a time when only God existed, God must, somehow, be both an “I” and a “You”.<br /><br /></span></strong>Of course, Christians know this is true. There is one God, but somehow God exists as three persons. We don’t pretend to know how this is possible. How could we, when we have only “goo-goo-gaa-gaa” to describe the eternal, the all-powerful, the ever present, the never changing? But we know this is true, because wisdom calls out in the streets. There are no secrets. God wants to be known. We see it in our Bibles.<br /><br />We see the Three together in chapter one of Mark, at the Jordon River when the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%201:9-11&version=NIV">saying</a>, “You are my Son, whom I love.” We see them in this morning’s passage: Wisdom with the Father, two Persons delighting in each other, delighting in the thing they’re creating together, and the delight created with their love becoming so complete within itself it must also be thought of as a Person, the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Because there are really three parts to Martin Buber’s word of love. There is the “I”. There is the “You”. And there is the dash between, the hyphen that holds I and You together, and is held in place by them.<br /><br />I was reading C.S. Lewis on the Trinity, and I found this:<br /><br /><em>“In Christianity God is not a static thing...but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person.”</em> (“Good Infection”. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_28?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mere+christianity+c.s.+lewis&sprefix=mere+christianity+c.s.+lewis"><em>Mere Christianity</em></a>, Book IV, “Beyond Personality”)<br /><br />God is a dance. What an amazing idea. But I think of how I feel when I’m closest to the Lord, and I know exactly what it means. And look at verses 23 and 24 again. See where it <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=prov%208:23-24&version=NASB">says</a>, “I was established,” or “I was brought forth”? That same Hebrew word can mean “I danced.” And in verses <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=prov%208:31-32&version=NASB">31 and 32</a>, where some translations see wisdom “rejoicing” in God’s presence, the Hebrew can also be understood to mean wisdom was “at play.”<br /><br />The idea that the Holy Spirit emanates from that dance, that play between the Father and the Son, made me remember a strange thing Jesus says in John 16:7: <em>“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”</em> Why did Jesus have to go away before the Holy Spirit would come down? If Lewis is correct, I think we have part of the answer.<br /><br />After accepting the humiliation of life on a fallen earth and betrayal and torture on the cross for you and me, the only begotten Son returned to the heavenly Father in triumph, and only then did the infinite delight of their reunion inspire the Holy Spirit to call out to all creatures great and small, “Come and join the dance!”<br /><br />All of this returns me to that question I asked earlier: Why is it almost every time Jesus talks about the way to enter a relationship with God, he says simply, “Believe?” How could such a simple thing make such a massive difference? The answer, of course, is that it is far from simple.<br /><br />C.S. Lewis went on to put this better than I could. He said:<br /><br /><em>“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 . . . If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separate from God, what can he do but wither and die?”</em> (Lewis, ibid)<br /><br />Even Christians sometimes forget that the beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom. She calls in the streets. She has no secrets. God wants to be known. But Jesus doesn’t want us to miss the obvious: We must believe her, not just one time long ago, but all day every day. James <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james%202:14-24&version=NIV">put</a> this in a different way: <em>“Faith without works is dead.”<br /></em><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Look at how you live your life. Do you really believe wisdom? Then do what she says.<br /></span></strong><br />If you’re not a Christian, you might think believing means turning your back on questions and answers. But Jesus has no secrets. Believe wisdom, and you step closer to the truth, not further from it. You step into the fountain from whom all the answers flow. You join the Divine dance Solomon describes. You are united with the Heavenly Father, Begotten Son, and Holy Spirit, and you will have eternity for answers.<br /><br />We are all made in the image and the likeness of a God who exists in true love, in “I the Father”, in “You the Son”, in the Spirit who holds I and You together and is held in place by them. Whether we never knew it before, or whether we knew it and forgot it, we are made in that rejoicing image of community. We are made in that dancing likeness of relationship.<br /><br />We can try to deny the obvious, and end up sulking all alone on the little island of “I-It”. Or we can believe the wisdom calling in the streets, and live like we believe it, and be at play in the fields of the Lord forever, in the joyous universe of “I-You”. Those are our only choices. Folly hides the ugly truth about herself, and in the end she will cost everything we have, but wisdom keeps no secrets, and the heavy price of what she offers is already paid. Wisdom calls to all of us, and the most important question is . . . shall we dance?Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-69531719174054590752011-02-04T09:50:00.000-08:002011-03-11T06:42:53.269-08:00On Getting Lungs<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TUw-lXPe9WI/AAAAAAAAAfk/wLWvxE2l6P8/s1600/Chest%2BXray%2B-%2B020411.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569895650765501794" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 120px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TUw-lXPe9WI/AAAAAAAAAfk/wLWvxE2l6P8/s400/Chest%2BXray%2B-%2B020411.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">To teach is to learn.</span> I led a discussion on the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:9-13&version=KJV">Lord’s Prayer</a> and the Proverbs last night, and gleaned many inspiring insights from the friends I was supposed to be teaching, but for me the most intriguing moment came when we discussed these two strange facts:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>1. The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be prayed by a community of believers.<br />2. There is no such community mentioned in the Proverbs.<br /></strong></span><br />Point number one seems clear when we notice the plural pronouns Jesus used: “<em>Our</em> Father”, “give <em>us</em> this day <em>our</em> daily bread”, “forgive <em>us</em> <em>our</em> debts as <em>we</em> forgive <em>our</em> debtors”. Surely the One who was the “craftsman at God’s side” during creation (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%208:%2022-31&version=ESV">Prov 8: 22-31</a>) did not craft these phrases lightly. We are meant to speak this prayer together, as a body which is one as Christ and the Father are one (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2017:11&version=ESV">John 17:11</a> & <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2017:22&version=ESV">22</a>). Why then don’t we see some hint of this communal aspect of belief in Proverbs? Solomon leads a people who are called to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Surely he well understood the role of community in a believer’s life. So why did Solomon use the words “our”, “us”, and “we” only in the context of a group of sinners who lie in wait to steal and murder, or an adulteress and adulterer together in their bed of sin? (See <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%201:11-15&version=ESV">Prov 1:11-15,</a> <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%207:18&version=ESV">7:18</a>, & <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%2024:12&version=ESV">24:12</a> the only three places in Proverbs where these plural pronouns appear in the Hebrew.)<br /><br />The answer, as we discussed it, lies in the fact that every child is born completely self-aware. Total immersion in ourselves makes it impossible imagine life in true community. So the Lord must meet us in that solitary place, and He does.<br /><br />No one enters the city of God (or the people of Israel) among a crowd. The gate is <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%207:13-14&version=ESV">narrow</a>, not only because it is difficult, but also because we must pass through one by one. Solomon, in all his wisdom, can only point the way. He does this not with constant references to heaven (there is just the one, mentioned above) nor with prophecies of messianic kingdoms (that will come five centuries later, with Daniel) but by showing one young man what life can be when lived as God intended all along. In so doing, Solomon helps that solitary young man understand he cannot measure up to such a life alone. No one can.<br /><br />Throughout the Proverbs Solomon <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%204:20-22&version=ESV">says</a> his words lead to life, but who can live the life of wisdom he describes? “The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom,” <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov%204:7&version=ESV">says</a> Solomon. It is as if he had said to a fish out of water, “Get lungs.”<br /><br />In the Gospels Jesus says “the Spirit gives life,” and “my words are Spirit.” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206:63&version=ESV">John 6:63</a>) Solomon’s words <em>point</em> to life; Jesus’ words <em>are</em> life. Wisdom is something one must try to get. Life is something given.<br /><br />So Solomon’s son strives for wisdom, rejecting the false community of unbelievers, but he remains alone. Only in Christ can we experience true communal life, true connection with our fellow human beings. All people outside Christ are spiritually dead, and nothing is more solitary than death. But inspired by Solomon’s glorious vision of how true life could be, those who enter one by one through that narrow gate—those who come alive—are joined in a single living Body, somehow “one” with millions and millions of other individuals across the globe and centuries, just as Jesus and the Spirit and the Father are One everywhere for all time.<br /><br />Through our collective Christian veins flows the blood of the one true life, Christ’s. This is not a matter of being in community one day, if all goes well. It is an accomplished fact. “It is finished,” because Christ has done it. We are one <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2015:5&version=ESV">vine</a>, one <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%2012:27&version=ESV">body</a>, one <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=col%201:18&version=ESV">church</a>. This is true even when we forget, even when we pretend otherwise, because even then we are alive in Christ, we all have lungs at last, and all of us together inhale one Spirit, counselor and protector. But we do forget, and therein lies a challenge we have faced for centuries.<br /><br />To an early church mired in doctrinal disputes, the church father <a href="http://www.biography.com/articles/Tertullian-9504420">Tertullian </a>once said the devil has tried to destroy the truth in many ways, often by defending it.<br /><br />Even last night we forgot it. As we read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Faith-Essays-Christian-Apologetics/dp/089870202X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296841056&sr=8-1">Peter Kreeft</a> on this subject, it was difficult to think of Peter as us, and to think of us as Peter, because we are Protestants and Peter is a Catholic. Our brother writes of the “mystical” and of “purgatory” and we look for distance from him, as if such a thing were possible, as if our brother were himself the embodiment of doctrine we deem false, as if the eye could say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” or to the feet, “I don’t need you!” simply because the eye sees something disagreeable about the hands and feet. (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Cor%2012:14-21&version=ESV">1 Cor 12:14-21</a>)<br /><br />We are people of the Book. We spend countless hours reading, talking and thinking about God’s Word, which is good because that is why the Book was given, but sometimes in the midst of it we would do well to pause and reflect on the poem of <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Blindmen_and_the_Elephant">The Blind Men and the Elephant</a>. Sometimes in the midst of it we would do well to remember that the very first doctrine we all learned--the Gospel itself--is at once the simplest and most wonderful, and it alone was all that mattered when we entered through that narrow gate. When doctrinal disputes arise in this community of ours, if in true humility we will follow every question to the Source, there we’ll find “nothing except Jesus, and him crucified.” Our faith does “not rest on the wisdom of men [not even Solomon’s!], but on the power of God.” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Cor%202:1-5&version=ESV">1 Cor 2:1-5</a>) Anything which contradicts that power is outside of us, but anything which does not contradict it should be embraced, if not with intellectual assent, then with loving forbearance.<br /><br />After all, it is truly finished. We are one vine, one body, one church. No lesser doctrine than the Gospel could unite us, and no lesser doctrine can divide us if only together we will pray, “<em>Our</em> Father...give <em>us</em>...lead <em>us</em>...deliver <em>us</em>.”Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-19459792478185217112011-01-19T08:51:00.000-08:002011-06-08T06:39:06.523-07:00The Worst List of All Time<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TTcabuQ7ktI/AAAAAAAAAfY/VnXt6tuHpPA/s1600/Potters%2BHands%2B-%2B011911.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5563944928217371346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 192px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 144px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TTcabuQ7ktI/AAAAAAAAAfY/VnXt6tuHpPA/s400/Potters%2BHands%2B-%2B011911.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">I found something disturbing recently</span> while looking for ways to promote <a href="http://whatatholwrote.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Opposite%20of%20Art">The Opposite of Art</a>. It’s a list over at GoodReads, called <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2.The_Worst_Books_of_All_Time">“The Worst Books of All Time.”</a> In the top (bottom?) 50 titles or so, I found books like: <em>To Kill a Mockingbird, Billy Budd, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Red Badge of Courage, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Forest Gump, Fahrenheit 451, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land,</em> and <em>The Pearl.</em> As a novelist and as a Christian, that list saddens me.<br /><br />While discussing it with some fellow novelists, one said many books by Christians are poorly written. She then felt the need to qualify her statement by affirming that she thinks there are lots of well-written novels by Christians. Probably she didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and that's laudable, but it seems to me she had it right the first time.<br /><br />It’s true many novels by Christians are poorly written. That's also true of many other kinds of novels. In fact it’s true of most novels of every kind, but its not a particular indictment of mediocre writers or the readers who enable them. Most people don't really care about excellence in architecture, sculpture, painting, or dance . . . or government, commerce, marriage, or anything else in life that ought to matter.<br /><br />What interests me, is why. In our discussion about the “Worst Books” list, some of my author friends speculated that so many people dislike those novels because they were forced to read them in school and disliked them then. But these books truly are works of genius—most of them are, anyway—so why didn't we love them in the first place?<br /><br />The answer has to do with what it means to live in a fallen world. As creatures made in the Creator's image, we were designed to use our gifts to their utmost, and to savor excellence in our neighbor's use of their gifts. It's impossible to imagine the words "good enough" being spoken in the Garden before the Fall. But we did fall, and one of the things we lost was our ability to throw ourselves into living with complete abandon. "Good is the enemy of great," as Jim Collins <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996">wrote</a> (paraphrasing <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/voltaire109643.html">Voltaire</a>). Thus, in settling for good enough, we have rampant mediocrity in the world.<br /><br />Another thing we abandoned in the Fall was our ability to perceive the true extent of what we've lost. So when expediency and ego dilute the full potential of even our best writers and artists, the audience, being also lost, doesn't know enough to care. Therefore they applaud what little they can get, and their applause rewards mediocrity. This in turn inspires the production of more mediocrity, and the cycle builds more and more support for itself until mediocrity seems normal, or even (God forbid) good, and because that lie has become pervasive, the truth is difficult for even Christians to remember. Thus we have rampant mediocrity even in the church.<br /><br />The faithful Christian's life will always include a sense of resisting mediocrity at every turn. It's a command and a duty. "Whatever you do, do it will all your heart, as if for the Lord and not for men." (Col 3:23) It's no coincidence that this command includes the same requirement for wholeheartedness as the Greatest Command of all, to "love the Lord your God with all your heart...."<br /><br />How can we love the Lord with all our heart? By living every part of life with all our heart. By not settling. By always striving to improve. In other words, as with all of His commands, the Creator simply wants us to live (write, marry, work, etc.) as we were originally created to live...with complete abandonment to what we truly are, which will reveal itself in the constant exercise of excellence in all our gifts.<br /><br />Don't believe the lie of "good enough." You're so much better than that. Strive for excellence in everything you do, including what you write and what you read.<br /><br />Live with all your heart.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-24960161808161389102011-01-08T10:22:00.000-08:002011-01-08T18:01:46.356-08:00Weigh the Soul<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TSiuF7-QTLI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/HiyH7oqvEBk/s1600/Scales%2Bof%2BJustice%2B-%2B010811.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559885157010263218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 160px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 138px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TSiuF7-QTLI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/HiyH7oqvEBk/s400/Scales%2Bof%2BJustice%2B-%2B010811.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">2011 marks the one hundredth anniversary</span> of Dr. Duncan MacDougall’s experimental attempt to prove that we have souls. His results? We do, and they weigh precisely <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_(doctor)">21 grams</a>.<br /><br />Color me skeptical.<br /><br />Whether or not one believes the doctor’s results, the idea of weighing one’s soul in the balance is a good thing to ponder at the start of a new year. But while Dr. MacDougall focused on the weighing, I’m more focused on the balance. Consider Psalms 139:4-6:<br /><br /><em>Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.</em> (NIV)<br /><br />At first I thought this was just a run-of-the-mill Biblical a statement about God’s omniscience. Then, considering it more carefully, I realized there’s something surprising being said here about...me.<br /><br />I expect an omniscient God to know everything about me, including the instincts—the deepest, inmost urges and forces—which inspire even the words I use to think. What I didn’t expect, is the Psalmist’s insistence that I cannot know myself on that instinctive level because “such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”<br /><br />In short: there are things about my mind that my own mind simply cannot know.<br /><br />What a paradox. And what a dilemma, because if I cannot know myself on the most fundamental of levels—the pre-thought level that inspires all thought—how can I improve myself fundamentally?<br /><br />If you’re skeptical that this is really true; if you believe you can learn to understand your own instincts, consider this, from Walker Percy’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Cosmos-Last-Self-Help-Book/dp/0312253990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294425899&sr=8-1"><em>Lost in the Cosmos</em></a>:<br /><br /><em>Can you explain why it is that there are, at last count, sixteen schools of psychotherapy with sixteen different theories of the personality and its disorders and that patients treated in one school seem to do as well or as badly as patients treated in any other—while there is only one generally accepted theory of the cause and cure of pneumococcal pneumonia and only one generally accepted theory of the orbits of the planets and the gravitational attraction of our galaxy and the galaxy M31 in Andromeda? (Hint: if you answer that the human psyche is more complicated than the pneumococcus and the human white-cell response or the galaxies of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, keep in mind the burden of proof is on you. Or if you answer that the study of the human psyche is in its infancy, remember that this infancy has lasted 2,500 years and, unlike physics, we don’t seem to know much more about the psyche than Plato did.)<br /><br /></em>In other words: if you really believe you can understand your own instincts, then you’re going to have to explain why science has a better understanding of galaxies a billion miles away, than it has about the nature of the human psyche.<br /><br />This speaks to the fundamental problem with the human condition, the thing that causes every kind of bad behavior from genocide to snarky comebacks: when a temptation to do the wrong thing comes, I may be able to manage my response, but before willpower or self-discipline has time to kick in, I still have a visceral reaction—a pre-response response if you will—that I cannot control. And I will never be able to control it.<br /><br />The reason my instinct is beyond control is obvious when I think how it works in real life. Suppose someone treats me rudely. I may be able to grin and bear it. I may even—with many years of practice—be able to turn the other cheek. But my most basic response to a rude person, the thing which inspires the thoughts I’m forced to try to manage with willpower and discipline, is still just as ugly as his rudeness <em>and I have no idea why.</em><br /><br />This is why Jesus <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mt%2019:17&version=NIV">said</a>, "There is only One who is good." None of us is "good" on this deepest, pre-thought level. Yet I don’t want to have those kinds of instincts. Who in his right mind would?<br /><br />Imagine instead if that very first reaction before a word was even on my tongue, was to love. How would it be to encounter someone’s rudeness and instinctively think, “What a sad, unhappy person he must be. I have to find a way to help him.” There would be no need to struggle for self-control, no need for constant vigilance, for the exhausting, joyless maintenance of willpower and discipline which are always on the verge of breaking down to expose the underlying instincts I so desperately want to hide. If love was the thing that inspired words before they were upon my tongue, then I could simply do the natural thing in every situation, knowing it’s the right and healthy course of action. What freedom that would be!<br /><br />So, I read that Psalm and came to this idea, and as so often happens, as soon as it occurred to me I sensed it had has been loitering in the antechamber of my brain for quite a while, waiting to come in. Because of course now that I think of it this way, I realize this disconnect between my desire to love and my base instincts is exactly what Jesus came to earth to change.<br /><br />Again and again, in dozens of ways, he tried to help us understand the problem:<br /><br /><em>“...unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”</em> (Matthew 18:3) NIV<br /><br /><em>“...no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”</em> (John 3:3) NIV<br /><br /><em>“...whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”</em> (Matthew 10:39) NIV<br /><br />Isn’t it interesting that Jesus deliberately chose humanly impossible metaphors? How could I become like a little child at my age? How could I go even further back and be born a second time? How could I find my own life after losing it? Such things are beyond me. In fact, (surprise, surprise) it turns out the solution to this problem, as Jesus has proposed it, can be described in the same words used by the Psalmist to describe the problem in the first place. Both the problem and solution are “too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”<br /><br />This is where balance comes back in.<br /><br />On one side, I can know part of the truth about my inner self, but never everything. On the other side, I can know part of the truth about God, but never everything. If pride presumes (pretends) to know it all in either case, the scales tip out of balance. But if humility prevails, and I admit my limitations in both cases, balance is achieved. In that case, by the grace made possible through Jesus, the Holy Spirit can begin to change my deepest instinct into the perfect love that God wants it to be.<br /><br />I sense this happening in me. It’s far from complete. It never will be finished in this life, but it is happening, and it is wonderful, and how I long to keep what can be known, and what cannot be known, in balance so the change will continue in the coming year.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-3207122888073557792010-12-24T06:50:00.000-08:002010-12-24T07:26:42.671-08:00Peace On A Troubled Earth<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TRS3PiQ4k8I/AAAAAAAAAfA/VRGQxWYbntw/s1600/Manger%2BScene%2B-%2B122410.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5554265717978207170" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 184px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 214px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TRS3PiQ4k8I/AAAAAAAAAfA/VRGQxWYbntw/s400/Manger%2BScene%2B-%2B122410.jpg" border="0" /></a><em><span style="font-size:180%;">And there were</span> in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.</em> (Luke 2:8-14)<br /><br />Peace is a fitting topic for the Advent season, because the angels’ Christmas announcement was, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace....” But this is often the least peaceful time of year, even for a Christian. As Christmas approaches our thoughts can turn to loved ones who are distant or departed, and that can make it difficult to find “peace on earth.” Surely God knew this would be the case, so what did His angels mean by “peace on earth,” exactly?<br /><br />Most of us know the Hebrew word for peace is <em>shalom</em>, of course. In Greek, it’s <em>eirene</em>. In both languages of the Bible the meaning of peace is much more than a simple feeling of tranquility, or the absence of war. Theologians say the Biblical ideas of shalom and eirene can be defined as wholeness, or completeness. Also honor. Integrity. Community. Righteousness and justice, maintaining healthy relationships, living out the golden rule, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.<br /><br />But is all of that what the angels meant by “peace on earth”?<br /><br />On that first Christmas Eve, Israel and most of the western world groaned under brutal Roman oppression. Between twenty and thirty percent of the people in Europe and around the Mediterranean were enslaved. Public entertainment involved fights to the death in coliseums. The government had people beaten, stripped naked and nailed to crosses where they were left to die of exposure, asphyxiation and dehydration. Forty years after Jesus was himself nailed to a cross, all of Jerusalem was leveled by the Romans, and the Jewish people were enslaved and scattered throughout the world. The so-called Pax Romana was nothing but peace by the sword.<br /><br />So much for wholeness and completeness and integrity and honor and righteousness and community and the golden rule and loving your neighbor as yourself. So much for peace by any earthly definition, really. Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble,” and he said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”<br /><br />But still, on that first Christmas Eve, the angels did say, “Peace on earth.”<br /><br />It’s understandable that so many unbelievers think the angels got it wrong. But you know, words have meaning, and we really need to stop and think about the words these angels used.<br /><br />Did they say the world was at peace?<br /><br />No.<br /><br />Did they promise the earth would be at peace?<br /><br />No.<br /><br />Their exact words were, “Peace on earth,” and they were angels after all, so we can assume they said exactly what they meant. When they appeared to those shepherds saying, “Peace on the earth,” they meant peace had arrived on the earth, right then, right there, and the shepherd could find peace if they wanted to, lying in a manger.<br /><br />To fully understand this, we must ask, “Who and what is Jesus Christ?” People compare him to Confucius or Buddha or Muhammad, as if he was a wise teacher, a religious leader, or a holy prophet, but none of that is accurate. Consider what Jesus said about himself:<br /><br />Jesus didn’t say “I <em>know</em> the way.” He said, “I <em>am</em> the way.”<br /><br />Jesus didn’t say “I’ll <em>tell you</em> the truth.” He said, “I <em>am</em> the truth.”<br /><br />Jesus didn’t say “I’ll <em>teach you</em> how to live.” He said, “I <em>am</em> the life.”<br /><br />So when the angels appeared to the shepherds saying, “Peace on earth,” they didn’t mean Jesus had arrived to teach us about peace, or to lead us into peace. When they said, “Peace on earth,” they meant Jesus has arrived. Period. “Peace on earth” was just another way of saying, “Jesus is on earth,” because Jesus Christ <em>is</em> Peace.<br /><br />You can find this all throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, Micah said the Messiah would be our peace (5:5). Isaiah called him the “Prince of Peace” in a scripture we hear put to glorious music every Christmas in Handel’s Messiah (9:6). And writing about Jesus in Ephesians, Paul said “He himself is our peace.” (2:14)<br /><br />This means when we talk about the ideas of shalom and eirene, we’re really talking about Jesus, and that adds a whole new dimension to Jesus’ own teaching on the subject of peace. For example, in the Gospel of John, on the night of his arrest, when Jesus tells the apostles how they can have peace he doesn’t give them a philosophy to follow, or a religion to practice, or a ten step process, or any kind of a to-do list at all.<br /><br />Instead, Jesus simply says “Abide in me,” or “Remain in me,” and then he says, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace” (16:33).<br /><br />Jesus doesn’t offer a kind of peace, or a way to peace. Jesus Christ is peace, period. So it makes perfect sense that authentic peace is only found in Jesus. The way to be at peace is very simple. Abide in Jesus. Remain in Jesus. In Jesus you’ll have peace.<br /><br />Maybe for you that doesn’t sound so simple. Maybe talk of being “in” Jesus sounds too vague and mystical for you. Fair enough. If you’re the practical kind, try thinking about it this way: you may not understand how it’s possible to be in Jesus Christ, but you do understand how a person can be in love, right? Well, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is deeply in love with you, so the way to be at peace is to simply love him back. Be in love with Jesus, and you will be at peace.<br /><br />Being at peace really is that easy, and that hard. It’s hard, because you can search the whole wide world and you won’t find peace on your own. It’s easy, because peace a free gift. Jesus said so himself, many times. He said, “God loved the world so much he gave his only son, so that anyone who believes in him would have eternal life.” And since Jesus Christ is peace, “God gave his only son” is just another way of saying God gave peace. It’s a gift. All you have to do—all you can do, if you want to be at peace—is accept the gift of peace.<br /><br />Even Christians can forget this sometimes. Even Christians sometimes need to be reminded that you can’t be at peace by figuring things out. You can’t be at peace by being good. You can’t buy peace with money. The pastors at your church can’t give you peace, and you won’t find peace in your friends or family. And this is very important: you might be alone in life; you might be sick; you might have no money and no job, but whatever kind of problem you’re facing today, the solution to your problems will not give you lasting peace. <em><strong>After these problems will always come more problems, because we don’t live on a peaceful earth, so while a solution to your problems might be wonderful, what you need even more is the kind of peace that makes it possible to face your problems peacefully.</strong></em> You need peace with God, just like the familiar Christmas carol promises:<br /><br /><em>Hark! The herald angels sing.<br />“Glory to the newborn King;<br />Peace on earth, and mercy mild;<br />God and sinners reconciled.”<br /><br /></em>This carol stands the test of time because it get things right. “Peace on earth” is about God and sinners reconciled, not about a peaceful earth. To the world, hanging on a cross is the opposite of peace on earth, but peace between God and us is only possible because Jesus Christ became that peace by hanging on a cross in place of you and me.<br /><br />Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” What irony! You can pay a horrible cost in blood, sweat and tears for worldly peace, but it can vanish in an instant. Or you can simply accept the peace Jesus wants to give, and it will last forever.<br /><br />Jesus went on to say, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” Because Jesus Christ is peace, he gives a different kind of peace, a peace that is all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present and eternal, a peace on earth that’s anything but earthly, as we find in yet another wise old Christmas carol everybody knows,<br /><br /><em>Silent night, holy night.<br />All is calm, all is bright<br />‘round yon virgin mother and child,<br />Holy infant so tender and mild.<br />Sleep in heavenly peace.<br />Sleep in heavenly peace.<br /><br /></em>No matter what kind of challenge, pain or suffering you face today, you can have heavenly peace on earth right here, right now. It’s a Christmas gift for everyone. Just fall in love with Jesus.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-8856095995245673952010-10-22T08:45:00.000-07:002010-10-22T09:31:44.110-07:00The Opposite of Art, first draft<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TMG7toxXdtI/AAAAAAAAAec/Ag4wh-Gif8o/s1600/Picture+Frame+-+102210.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5530908210100664018" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 177px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TMG7toxXdtI/AAAAAAAAAec/Ag4wh-Gif8o/s400/Picture+Frame+-+102210.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Hey, remember me?</span> I've been gone a while. On Wednesday I sent a good first draft of <em><strong>THE OPPOSITE OF ART</strong></em> off to the editor. As always, in the final months of work on a new novel it becomes impossible to even think about keeping up with this blog. Wish I could do both, but there's only so much energy in this little brain of mine. Anyway, the hard part's over now, so I'm back.<br /><div><div><div><div></div><div>I'm excited about this new novel. After moving further into "magical realism" territory with <em><a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/LostMission_reviews.html">LOST MISSION</a></em>, this one continues the momentum in that direction. Most readers seem to think <em><a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/RiverRising_reviews.html">RIVER RISING</a></em> is my best work so far, but I suspect they're about to change their minds. Here's a taste from the first draft:</div><br /><div></div><div><em><span style="color:#000000;">The sirens called him from his dreams. When the racket stopped, he rose and crossed the little bedroom of his hotel suite to lean naked out into the night, trusting his life to the freezing wrought iron railing just beyond the window so he could gaze down into the alley where a couple of New York’s finest had thrown some guy up against the bricks. Even from five floors up, even in the dark, Ridler recognized the lust for violence and the fear down there, but that was nothing compared to the play of the police car’s lights on the brick wall across the alley.<br /><br />Shivering, he watched the blood and bruises rhythm of the red and blue, red and blue, the flashes regular against the motionless pattern of the dirty terra cotta colored masonry, worlds colliding in the two configurations, lights ethereal and fleeting, bricks stacked earthy and unchanged for generations. In the time and space created at the intersection of those patterns Ridler saw deep shadows slash across the wall, carved out of the light by the few bricks which had resisted the usual linear fate of their kind, standing out a little, casting empty voids across their fellows like witches conjuring a pitch-black portal to a future or a past. Lately he’d been interested in voids, in portals. He sensed a presence waiting beyond time in them, something no one else had painted. Gazing at the blank brick wall Ridler ignored the policeman down below pummeling the screaming fellow’s kidneys with methodical jabs, left, right, left, right. Although that too was a pattern in its way, there was no color in it, and certainly no transcendence.<br /><br />When the screaming stopped and the guy dropped face down in a puddle of oily rainwater, Ridler tucked his long black hair behind his ear to better consider the rotating lights rippling in the glistening pavement around the body. Steam arose like ectoplasm at a manhole cover, transubstantiated from ghostly grays to primary colors by the police car’s flashing lights. It occurred to Ridler they would switch off the lights at any moment.<br /><br />Turning from the window with a curse he ran into the sitting room, which he used as a studio, easel standing on a paint-splattered tarp in one corner, finished paintings hanging everywhere, stacks of waiting canvases against the walls. From the dining table he gathering his sketchpad and some pastels. Seconds later he was back in the bedroom, bare haunch against the window jamb, half in, half out, colored chalks and charcoals on the sill beside him, fingers dashing back and forth across the pad, eyes mainly on the wall across the alley, ignoring the cold in his desperation to memorize the image in case he couldn’t get it down before they killed it off forever.<br /><br />The lights went out. The brick wall was just a wall again. Ridler leaned dangerously far out into the frigid air beyond the wrought iron railing, teetering five stories up to scream, “Turn your lights back on!” The policemen down below ignored him, focused as they were on dragging the inert man over to their car. Ridler’s breath turned into clouds, drifting off into the night. “Give me back my lights!” The policemen drove away without bothering to look up. Pulling back in from the brink, Ridler muttered, “Pigs.”</span></em></div><div><br />(Opening paragraphs of the first draft, <em>THE OPPOSITE OF ART</em>, which will be published in the spring)</div></div></div></div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-9883176709220571912010-07-24T07:28:00.000-07:002010-08-19T12:05:00.430-07:00Commit Literature<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TEr5W9CoG2I/AAAAAAAAAdc/G4Ie0uE_WH0/s1600/Hand+with+hammer+-+071410.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497480467897129826" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 160px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 149px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TEr5W9CoG2I/AAAAAAAAAdc/G4Ie0uE_WH0/s400/Hand+with+hammer+-+071410.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">When I began writing</span> my first novel in 1993, I made a decision that still guides my work today. I would not try to write “great literature.” I would instead content myself with a simple little story, but I would write it to the best of my ability, and work hard to improve my skills to assure that what I wrote, while no masterpiece, would at least reflect well upon my Maker. I believe the most important words a Christian can apply to any kind of work are these, which were written to slaves by a man in chains:<br /><br /><em>“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”</em> (Colossians 3:23-24) NIV<br /><br />So I wrote slowly and painstakingly, carefully considering every word from many different standpoints. I sought out the opinions of intelligent acquaintances, and was never too proud to make constructive changes when suggested. Then, through a series of remarkable events (which I hope to write about one day in this column) to my very great surprise that first novel was published. But what surprised me even more was a comment made about that novel by an editor at a major newspaper. He said it “verged on committing literature.”<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">How strange it was to hear that word, when “literature” was the very thing I told myself I would not do.</span></strong><br /><br />Since those days Providence has seen fit to let me finish eight more novels, with six of those in print so far, and one memoir which may outlast them all. At the risk of seeming immodest, there have been several literary awards and many not uncomplimentary reviews, all of which when taken together have tended to imply that others see in me a puzzling habit of producing “literature.” This has caused me some confusion, for not once in all the years of writing—a million words or more—have I gone back on my original decision. Never have I consciously attempted literature.<br /><br />Literature was for the academy. It was dense, impenetrable, lofty and apart. I simply wanted to tell unusual stories that might entertain readers, might enchant them through the characters and images brought to mind, and might perhaps leave them with a useful thought or two. How did that amount to literature?<br /><br />For help in thinking through this question I looked to that ever-faithful writer’s servant, Webster’s. It turns out “literature” might not be the stuffy snob I once suspected. It is only <em>“writings in prose or verse; especially: writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.”</em><br /><br />Well. That didn’t sound so bad. In fact, this was a fair description of what I expected to read in every novel worth my time. It’s what one should expect from any gifted novelist who does his best to write “with all his heart, as if working for the Lord.” Indeed, now that I think about it, this is what every novel in the Christian Fiction genre ought to be: “excellence of form or expression, and ideas of permanent or universal interest.” For what is the alternative? Mediocrity of form and expression? Unimportant and uninteresting ideas? As an inheritor of the greatest story ever told, what kind of Christian storyteller would I be if I was satisfied with that?<br /><br />Since I am indeed a Christian truly serious about the faith, I have finally decided to accept this fact: whether I try to write a Transcendent Masterpiece or simply keep on trying to amuse, my underlying goal must be to “commit literature” as it is defined above. If that is not my goal, if I am satisfied with less, then I am not writing for the Lord with all my heart, and in that case I would do best to stop writing altogether and seek some other kind of work.<br /><br />In exactly the same way, whether you are a home schooling mother, a scientist, an assembly line worker or a lawyer, if you are a Christian you are called to work with all your heart as if working for the Lord. No job is too mundane for that calling; no task is too trivial. Those words were first meant for slaves, remember, written to them by a man in prison. I cannot help being a writer; this gift was given without asking if I might prefer another. Similarly, a slave by definition cannot choose his work, but in following St. Paul’s admonition he can most certainly redeem it. Perhaps life has assigned you only ditches to be dug, but in the way you dig them you decide if you are making literature or pulp. Every task, from the most denigrated to the most celebrated, becomes a form of praise and worship if it’s done with all your heart as if for the Lord. That choice is always yours.<br /><br />Praise the Lord with excellence in whatever work you do, and prepare to be surprised when others call it something more than you dreamed possible.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">The original version of this post was was first published on July 15, 2010 at </span><a href="http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-beauty-is-not-quite.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Novel Journey</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-32312876232161437972010-07-06T13:38:00.000-07:002011-06-08T07:20:37.644-07:00On Beauty III<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TDOXMH8RdqI/AAAAAAAAAdE/6fBAduu-vyI/s1600/Sunset+01+-+061610.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490898605240841890" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TDOXMH8RdqI/AAAAAAAAAdE/6fBAduu-vyI/s400/Sunset+01+-+061610.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Do you know what beauty is?</span> For fifteen years now I've been trying to create it in my novels, and although the finished product never seems to measure up to what I had in mind, I think it's important to keep working toward it consciously and passionately. Not everyone agrees. In <a href="http://whatatholwrote.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-beauty-i.html">this post</a> I wrote about the strange fact that many novelists rarely think of beauty as a goal in their work. In <a href="http://whatatholwrote.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-beauty-ii.html">this one</a> I discussed the reason why a Christian of all people ought to do exactly that, which brings me to the point: when you’re in hot pursuit of a thing, it’s important to understand exactly what that thing is.<br /><br />So what is beauty, anyway?<br /><br />It’s a difficult question to answer. Everyone has an opinion on how to define beauty, and our opinions vary widely. Like love or the taste of water, it seems beauty is the kind of thing one can’t quite explain. Webster’s defines it as “the quality attributed to whatever pleases or satisfies the senses or mind,” but notice this describes beauty in terms of its effect and not in terms of what it is. One simply knows beauty when one senses it, and as is often the case with intangibles, this means when we ask, “What is beauty?” it may be simpler to explain what beauty isn't. So I've compiled a little list of what beauty is not. Here goes:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>"Beautiful” is not a synonym for “pretty.”</strong></span><br /><br />This fact is embedded in the language. While “beautiful” comes from the root noun “beauty,” there is no root noun for “pretty.” On the contrary, “pretty,” an adjective, is the root of “prettiness,” a noun. This means we can describe a thing as pretty, but pretty in itself is not a thing to be described. On the other hand, beauty requires no object. Beauty is a thing itself, and it is not necessarily pretty. <br /><br />Nature offers countless examples of the difference. The perfect contours of a great white shark are easily an aesthetic match for any sculptor's masterpiece, and it moves with an effortless grace that any prima ballerina would envy. Surely “beauty” is not too strong a word to define such complete balance of form and function, but who would call that awesome predator “pretty”? Not all beautiful things are pretty, therefore the two are not the same.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Beauty is not relative to anything.</span></strong> <br /><br />Certainly we are conditioned by our cultures to prefer one form of beauty over another in some cases. Many Japanese men think geishas are beautiful. With respect, I prefer less makeup. But that kind of disagreement exists only when we compare what we ourselves create. Everyone on earth agrees sunsets are beautiful. That fact means cultural distinctions are irrelevant when it comes to beauty found nature. Natural beauty—primal beauty—is an absolute which transcends nation, race, gender, religion, age, social mores and language. It is not relative to anything.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Beauty is not always comfortable.</strong></span> <br /><br />Consider forest fires and lightning. Think of the summit of Mount Everest. Are they not beautiful in their own ways? Yet aren’t they also terrifying? Remember the great white shark again, or a black widow or a lion. Some beauty makes us so uncomfortable we feel the need to set ourselves apart from it. And our desire for distance from some kinds of beauty isn’t only due to danger. We were created to care for the garden. To work it. To organize it and arrange it. This explains the impulse many of us feel to make some kind of change in nature. We trim hedges. We separate flowerbeds from lawns. But what of those who take that impulse further? Who set fire to forests simply to destroy them, hunt for animals they do not eat, and fence off land they do not use? Beauty sometimes makes us sense our smallness. It reminds us we are not in control. It whispers “You are only mortal, and none of this is really yours.” Beauty is not always comfortable.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Beauty is not halfhearted.</span></strong><br /><br />Sometimes I fail to write beautiful words because of a momentary lack of enthusiasm, a distracted mind, or a prideful hidden agenda, but there is no pretension, no confusion, no uncertainty and no shortage of exuberance in anything of beauty found in nature. Every beautiful insentient thing from the smallest one-celled organism or slightest grain of sand to the greatest sequoia or the highest mountain is completely and sincerely what it is. Indeed, it is only when this is not true—when the purity of nature is polluted—that we call it ugly. <br /><br />Similarly, no crow ever wished it was an eagle. No leopard ever wished it was a lion. Everything of beauty with a consciousness is absolutely determined to be completely what it is, everything that is, except sometimes for man. <br /><br />Even man is the exception that proves the rule, for who could rightly call a man “beautiful” while he is pretentiously pretending to be something he is not? Such a man may still be lovable (it's best to love him anyway, for we are him from time to time) but it is not possible to think of him as beautiful. Beauty is not halfhearted.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Beauty is not slipshod or substandard.</span></strong> <br /><br />As long as it lives, a mighty oak will always grow leaves in the spring. It never forgets. It never grows leaves partway, or poorly. It never makes the mistake of growing toads or daffodils, nor does it grow leaves on its roots or over in the next county. Mighty oaks are beautiful in part because they can be relied upon to do what oaks do perfectly, each and every time they do it. In the same way, doves are beautiful in part because they always sing their mournful song without missing a note. Ocean surf is beautiful in part because waves always come, one after the other, on and on with never one that fails to do its duty and surrender to the beach. All beauty in creation must fulfill the promise of itself completely. Beauty is not slipshod or substandard.<br /><br />Undoubtedly there are many other things which beauty is not, but I have only time and space enough to mention one thing more:<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Beauty does not exist for our entertainment.</span></strong> <br /><br />Just as the Rocky Mountains were not raised up for snow skiing, and the Bible was not written to help readers avoid boredom, beauty may fascinate or even hold us spellbound, but that is not its purpose. <br /><br />Entertainment can be pretty. It can be funny. It can be tragic. But if a moment comes when we suddenly realize a pretty painting, a funny movie, or a tragic novel has somehow become beautiful before our very eyes, we mean it has become something more than merely entertaining. <br /><br />Entertainment is always inward focused. Its sole purpose is wrapped up in us, but beauty exists either with us or without us, and often, sadly, in spite of us. Think of the violent and profligate life of Caravaggio, or the egomaniacal Frank Lloyd Wright. Think of their beautiful paintings and architecture. The fact that base and selfish men can produce beauty proves that beauty is true, transcendent and sublime in and of itself, and not dependent on us whatsoever. Beauty is not about our entertainment.<br /><br />But what does it mean to say beauty is true, transcendent and sublime? I could write a book to explain and add no further understanding to that statement. In the end, there's only one thing I can say in the affirmative about beauty without fear of contradiction:<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Beauty is mysterious.</span></strong> <br /><br />And it is because of this quality of mystery that beauty is most easily defined by looking elsewhere, at the negative. The loss of mystery becomes the loss of beauty. <br /><br />Practically speaking, this means the best chance of finding beauty in one's work is to concentrate on avoiding all the things that it is not. To create a work of beauty, I cannot write merely pretty words, or comfortable words, or entertaining words. I cannot slavishly conform to culture. I cannot tolerate mediocre craftsmanship, and I cannot write halfheartedly. <br /><br />Beauty is a mystery, so a novelist (or any kind of artist) in pursuit of beauty must never look for it directly. If we do that, we will find beauty has escaped us, much as soap bubbles pop when they are touched and flowers wilt when they are plucked. No one can define the mystery of beauty, but everybody knows it when they sense it. Indeed, beauty is a mystery so powerful it’s blinding. It’s like looking at the sun. I must gaze off to the side, to a place where beauty is not, if I hope to glimpse it as it is, for as the Source of all beauty once famously said, “You may see my glory, but no one may see my face and live.”<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">The original version of this essay was was first published on June 17, 2010 at </span><a href="http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-beauty-is-not-quite.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Novel Journey</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-30299738686706634872010-06-23T06:54:00.000-07:002010-06-27T08:47:33.882-07:00On Beauty II<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TCIVeJEnN-I/AAAAAAAAAc8/jSmA3oYWsw4/s1600/Expensive+Perfume+-+062310.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485970903666210786" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 81px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 195px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TCIVeJEnN-I/AAAAAAAAAc8/jSmA3oYWsw4/s400/Expensive+Perfume+-+062310.JPG" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:180%;">It was a bad week.</span> My last living aunt had passed away. Her name was Liz, and she was a hoot. If you’re old enough to remember Phyllis Diller or Carol Channing you’ll have a general idea of how much fun she was. I’ll miss her so. Then the next day I had lunch with a friend whose wife had just filed for divorce. My friend has a drinking problem, and his wife decided she couldn’t take it anymore. After lunch I spent time with another hurting friend whose only child was down to one last hope—an experimental therapy—to beat his cancer.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I had to write 1,000 good words that day, and do it again the next day, and every other day until September if I was going to meet the deadline on my next novel.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000000;">The word count wasn’t the real problem. I’ve been at this writing game a long time. I’ve written amidst the distractions of airports, coffee shops and shopping malls. Even with all of this emotional turmoil I could probably still deliver 5,000 or even 10,000 readable words a day. But good words . . . aye, to quote the Bard, there’s the rub.<br /><br /></span><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">It’s tempting to lose focus and begin to wonder why I bother. In a world like this, excellence in the arts can seem like such a trivial pursuit. Indeed, never mind excellence, the reason art matters at all is sometimes questioned. With grief, loneliness, addiction, pain and fear all around us, what’s the point of literature? Why paint? Why sculpt? Why dance, or act, or sing? Why not devote oneself to something practical instead?<br /><br /></span></strong>Near the end of the book of Job, after that unfortunate man has lost his children, his fortune and his health, after he has suffered the interminable counsel of well-meaning friends who insist he somehow brought disaster on himself, after he has come perilously close to blasphemy while demanding an accounting from his creator, after all of that, Job finally encounters God. Strangely, when God appears it is not with explanations. Job learns nothing of the reason for his suffering. He gets no answer to Rabbi Kushner’s famous question, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Even so, in the end Job is satisfied. God appears, and Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” God appears, and his appearing is enough for Job.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span><br />My friend Brad, a professor at a well-known college of fine art, tells me it’s been fashionable for many years in the art community to question the existence of beauty. Not to question beauty’s definition or value, understand, but to question its very existence. One person finds Picasso’s <em><a href="http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79766">Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</a></em> lovely, while another person thinks it’s ugly. In the world of art theory this divergence of opinion has sometimes been taken to mean beauty is nothing but a social construct.<br /><br />It is an old idea. It is <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiastes%201:14&version=NIV">the lament of Ecclesiastes</a>. Everything is meaningless under the sun. Yet not everything, for Job saw God and that was enough.<br /><br />Once I suffered from severe depression. Like Job I cursed the day of my birth. I was saved from the temptation of suicide by snowcapped mountains, golden birches, and the sparkling Milky Way. I was saved by reflections of God’s beauty.<br /><br />I don’t mean to say God is beautiful. No mere adjective applies to him. St. John tells us “God is love.” God is beautiful in exactly the same way. Like love, beauty is God’s essence. Beauty does not describe God; it is the fact of God. It is his glory, his weight, the very thing the prophet Moses begged to see on Sinai.<br /><br />The gospels tell a story of a woman who poured <a href="http://www.saksfifthavenue.com/main/ProductDetail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524445695769&afsrc=1&site_refer=GGLBASE001&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=0652638000039">very expensive perfume </a>on Jesus. His disciples were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."<br /><br />And what was Jesus’ reply?<br /><br />"Why are you bothering this woman?” he asked. “She has done a beautiful thing . . .”<br /><br />Beauty exists because God exists. To reveal beauty is to reveal God. Therefore, if our art is beautiful, if we struggle to write good words instead of merely readable ones, then sometimes, just for an instant, God appears and God’s appearing is enough. In a world of grief, loneliness, addiction, pain and fear, no act of man could be more practical than that.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">The original version of this essay was first published May 20, 2010 at </span><a href="http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2010/03/forgotten-beauty.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Novel Journey</span></a>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-44829901858605142262010-06-16T14:10:00.000-07:002011-06-08T07:01:57.765-07:00On Beauty I<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TBlCFskPa-I/AAAAAAAAAc0/qoh1toESVGg/s1600/Working+Drawings+-+061610.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483486686930234338" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 276px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 204px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/TBlCFskPa-I/AAAAAAAAAc0/qoh1toESVGg/s400/Working+Drawings+-+061610.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">It was an obvious mistake.</span> Long ago during my life as an architect I designed a restaurant’s floor plan with the front doors swinging inward. If there had been a fire and a crowd rushed out, those who got to the doors first would have been unable to open them because of the press of people coming from behind. In the years since then as a full time novelist, I have spent a lot of time with other authors exploring the best practices of plotting, characterization, theme, setting, and craftsmanship. Strangely, I cannot recall a single conversation about beauty. This is remarkable omission for professional writers, easily as inexplicable as an experienced architect who draws a pair of entry doors that swing against the flow. <div></div><div><span style="color:#ffffff;"><b>When I first realized what we were missing, I thought perhaps it was because the goal of beauty in a novel is so obvious we think conversation is unnecessary, much as people rarely talk about the importance of air.</b></span></div><div><span style="color:#ffffff;"></span></div><div><span style="color:#ffffff;"></span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span></div><div>Yet that can’t explain it, since we spend so much time discussing other aspects of good fiction which are also obvious. If we feel characterization is worth our consideration, or plotting, or theme, why not beauty, too?</div><div></div><br /><div>Next I wondered if we might ignore the topic due to the mistaken belief that beauty is the end result of every other aspect of a novel. If we do those other things well, beauty will—so the theory goes—follow naturally. But it seems to me this makes no more sense than a pair of tourists who plan a journey to the last detail without ever mentioning their destination. To arrive at a place, one must set out for it. To set out for it, one must have it in mind.</div><div></div><br /><div>Maybe we’re embarrassed by the idea of discussing beauty in our work. Maybe we feel it is immodest to admit pursuit of such a goal. Or maybe we’re intimidated by the subject. Maybe we fear open talk of beauty makes us more accountable for its absence from our words.</div><div></div><br /><div>Whatever the reasons, I think it strangest that I didn’t notice this omission earlier. When novelists get together to talk about their work, beauty (or the lack of it) is the elephant in the room, the emperor’s new clothes, the front doors swinging inwards. This is particularly odd for Christian authors, who write in service of the One who “shines forth in beauty” as the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps%2050:2&version=NIV">Psalmist</a> said, and who are <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20peter%203:3-4&version=NIV">commanded</a> to pursue an unfading beauty which “is of great worth in God’s eyes.” We create because we were created in the Creator’s image. God called all creation “good,” which is to say, beautiful. Since beauty was God’s end result, it must have been His intention in the beginning. Should it not be so with us?</div><div></div><br /><div>The modernist movement in architecture, guided by Louis Sullivan’s famous statement “Form ever follows function,” brought us those <a href="http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbi.cgi/Lake_Shore_Drive_Apts.html/cid_lake_shore_001.html">boring glass boxes</a> that now pass for good design among the skylines of our cities. But consider something like a rose. Certainly its scent and color serve a purpose, but does the rose exist in all its glory simply because form follows function? I think not. Surely nature could have achieved the same effect without going to so much trouble.</div><div><br /></div><div>We are taught to focus on grace and good works will follow. So it should be in a novel. Beauty ought to be an intentional focus, and from that focus will come excellence in craftsmanship and characters, plots and settings. If our work is an offering to God, let us not rely on accidents to make it worthy. Let us search out the finest words deliberately with beauty as our goal, as shepherds once searched through their flocks for lambs without a blemish.</div><div></div><br /><div>Perhaps some will object that they find glass box buildings beautiful. </div><div><br /></div><div>If so, far be it from me to disagree. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, if I may fall back on cliché to make the point. What I am concerned with here is not some universal standard that makes a novel beautiful. I am simply saying a novelist should strive for beauty with all his heart and soul and mind and strength. If lust equals adultery, and anger equals murder, surely the principle works in the positive. What matters most as people and as writers is what we hope for, what we dream, what we strive to do. Even the most discriminating art collector would find a misshapen lump of clay beautiful beyond compare if it was formed as a gift by the small hands of a loving son or daughter. If a Christian author’s novel is her offering to God, let her strive to make it beautiful however she defines the term, and it will be so to God.</div><div></div><br /><div>Commercialism, fads and apathy toward the subject are perhaps the worst enemies of beauty in fiction. Commercialism begins with the wrong motive, when motive is a fundamental quality of beauty as I have just said. The pursuit of fads, while popular with some marketing professionals, yields nothing more than slavish imitation, when nature’s infinite variety reveals beauty and originality as inseparable. And apathy is the opposite of love, when love is the underlying purpose of all things beautiful. An author who cares about beauty in her work will rigorously avoid these things.</div><div></div><br /><div><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>The best friends of beauty in a novel are deep contemplation, honesty, intentionality, originality and love. </strong></span></div><div><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong><br /></strong></span></div><div><span>Deep contemplation, because lasting beauty is never superficial. Honesty, because duplicity is ugly. Intentionality because true beauty comes only from beautiful motives. Originality because again, nature’s variety proves it inseparable from beauty. And love, because it is both the purpose and the Source of all things beautiful.</span></div><div></div><br /><div>Sadly, our culture values instant gratification above everything, even at the cost of ugliness and mediocrity. Television, fast food restaurants and tract houses testify to this. Even more sadly, Christian readers are as guilty of it as anyone. The popularity of simplistic answers to the many paradoxes in the scriptures is one proof of this.</div><div></div><br /><div>Only pride or money could explain why a novelist would pursue readers who demand easy answers to the vast enigma of the Godhead, who have no time for sunsets, who find an ocean view too empty, who barely see the roses, much less stop to smell them.</div><div></div><br /><div>We are told no one can serve two masters. Write for pride or money, and you do not write for love or beauty. Yet we are also told our novels must burst upon the reader’s mind with all the urgency of a fire drill. We must hook them. We must do it right away or they will rush off to the next shiny lure, and we must keep them on the hook, wiggling like a dying fish until the bitter end. But beauty does not operate that way. Beauty demands nothing. It does not insist. Beauty whispers. It entices.</div><div></div><br /><div>For those who love in spite of the unknown and unknowable, for those who gaze in awe at sunsets, ocean views and roses all ablaze with color, there is another sort of hook. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just to pick one fine example, consider <em>One Hundred Years of Solitude</em>, by Gabriel García Marquéz. I found little in the plot to justify so many pages, and today I do not recall a single character’s name, but the words . . . the words! Contrary to the usual advice, for me it was no page-turner. Instead my mind lingered, dreading the coming end because each page turned meant one page closer to the ceasing of those beautiful, beautiful words. The joy they sparked within me will not die until I do.</div><div></div><br /><div>How I wish the world was filled with novels of such beauty! How I strive and strive to write such words, every single one an offering without blemish to the Source of beauty. And how I search for those who also strive to write that way, that I might have a chance to read them when the Lord is done.</div><div><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">This essay was first published March 4, 2010 at </span><a href="http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2010/03/forgotten-beauty.html"><span style="font-size:85%;">Novel Journey</span></a></div><div></div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-35916544488417943062010-03-29T08:11:00.000-07:002010-04-02T10:20:54.184-07:00Proof of God<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S7DFWmPVpXI/AAAAAAAAAcM/v87GEsDsTNs/s1600/Holding+Hands+-+032910.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454076140758345074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 158px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 142px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S7DFWmPVpXI/AAAAAAAAAcM/v87GEsDsTNs/s400/Holding+Hands+-+032910.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Jesus didn't pick His metaphors lightly.</span> Jesus is the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%201:1-2&version=NIV">Word</a> after all, so every word he spoke was chosen with complete precision. He could have picked any symbol in the universe, yet he said “<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206:27-29&version=NIV">turn the other cheek</a>.” Why? Clearly He intended us to think in terms of being willing to allow another slap. Does that mean He wants us to be slapped? Of course not. But Jesus does want us to remain within arm’s length—slapping distance—of each other.<br /><div><div><br />At this point, some people always want to fly to worst-case scenarios, so please understand I do <em>not</em> mean that an abused wife should continue to allow herself to be beaten. But real forgiveness always involves <em>some</em> level of engagement—as much as possible within the confines of good sense. This is true because God is love. Everything God does and every command God ever gave can ultimately be traced back to a desire to nourish loving relationships between us and our neighbor, and between us and Him. The one thing that makes a loving relationship impossible is to push a person completely out of your life. The entire point of forgiveness is remaining open to reconciliation. Anything less than that is a counterfeit forgiveness, which is to say, a lie. </div><div><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#ffffff;"><strong>If Jesus’ metaphor means anything, it means you cannot forgive a person from beyond arm’s length.</strong></span></div><div><strong></strong><br />Another important aspect of forgiveness is the fact that it’s a choice, not a process. We may need to make the choice a thousand times, and that choosing and re-choosing may <em>look</em> like a process, but in fact it is not. We are commanded to forgive. The command came with <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%206:14-15&version=NIV">a promise and a warning</a>, in order to teach us it is not an option, not a suggestion. It is a sin to disobey. To call it a “process” is tantamount to calling obedience to any other command a process. “I’m working on being faithful to my wife.” “I’m working on leaving other people’s possessions alone.” “I’m working on telling the truth.” These are morally identical statements to “I’m working on forgiving.” There is no middle ground, no process involved. There is only the choice to obey Jesus in this area in this moment, or not.<br /></div><br /><div>Finally, at no time has God ever commanded anyone to do anything <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dt%2030:11-14&version=NIV">impossible</a>. This means God’s will for us is never contingent on God’s will for <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eze%2018:20&version=NIV">someone else</a>. Forgiveness is a choice. Repentance is a choice. The two choices are completely independent of each other. I have no moral right to wait on your repentance before I forgive you. On the contrary, I am commanded to forgive you, period. I am commanded to forgive whether you repent of what you’ve done or not. The same is true of repentance. I must repent of my sins against a neighbor, whether that neighbor will forgive me or not. These are clear commands. But reconciliation is not commanded, because such a command would be beyond any individual’s ability to obey. Reconciliation requires not only my obedience, but also yours. Again, God never makes one person’s obedience contingent on another’s. Relationship is what we get when forgiveness meets repentance, but forgiveness and repentance each stand alone as the moral obligations of the parties involved. Both are commanded; neither is contingent on the other, and both are pleasing to the Lord.<br /></div><br /><div>Forgiveness may well be the most difficult of all of God’s commands, because it demands a total denial of pride and it leaves no room whatsoever for illusions or half measures. Why does God expect so much? As Dale Cramer wrote in his beautiful novel, <a href="http://www.dalecramer.com/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=0477683E4046471488BD7BAC8DCFB004&nm=&type=PubCom&mod=PubComProductCatalog&mid=BF1316AF9E334B7BA1C33CB61CF48A4E&tier=3&id=88D5B94B69A74D0AA4B9DA44BA5CA75E&SiteID=ADF7DC6C199E4C16B4275B4067ACE33A"><em>Levi's Will</em></a>, “God is love. Love is the proof of God, and forgiveness is the proof of love.”</div></div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-17065838616143036472010-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:002010-03-05T08:49:03.661-08:00Saved and Lost<div align="left"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S5EwWbw_ltI/AAAAAAAAAb8/tQiVh8V4TYM/s1600-h/Maze+-+030510.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445186586436146898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 216px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 151px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S5EwWbw_ltI/AAAAAAAAAb8/tQiVh8V4TYM/s400/Maze+-+030510.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">What can we do about this filthy church?</span> The short answer is...nothing. No matter which way we turn, which path we choose, we ourselves can only contribute to the mess. On the other hand, God might have a plan...<br /><br />In her comment on the <a href="http://whatatholwrote.blogspot.com/2010/02/filthy-church.html">“Filthy Church”</a> post, Dianne made such an important point. She wrote, "...many confuse justification with sanctification, which is where the "working out" part is supposed to start..." For those who are unclear about the theological terms “justification” and “sanctification,” here’s the gist of Dianne’s point: Too many of us in the American church today view Christianity as a single act of belief, a one time leap of faith which gets us “in,” with no further obligation ("justification"), but if that faithful moment is sincere it will be the first leap of a lifetime lived in obedience, which is to say, a lifetime lived in love ("sanctification").<br /><br />“The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:4) Many of the people in the “filthy church” are not truly Christians, of course. As John said, they are liars. Mostly I think they are lying to themselves.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">But there are others whose belief is sincere, even though their lives show little sign of their belief. I know, because I was once one of them. And since that is true, since there truly are believers living life like pagans, what can be the matter?<br /><br /></span></strong>The problem starts with a terrible misconception about God's grace. “Grace” is God stooping down to save us from ourselves, even though we don’t deserve it. That’s the definition. Unfortunately, many Christians seem to understand God’s grace only in terms of justification (God stooping to the cross to get us “in”) but not in terms of sanctification (God stooping down to guide us ever closer to Him). In other words, we think our need for God’s grace was over when we trusted in the cross. We think, “Grace has done its work, now it’s up to me...” as if Christian life were a relay race, and God has passed us the baton. But we are weak, so of course in trying to take over for the Lord, we are bound to fail.<br /><br />Then comes the guilt and shame. A terrible burden, and so painful, because we know we do not measure up. Usually we slip into denial as a form of self-defense, unable to obey, and unable to be honest about our disobedience because of the way it makes us feel. We fill our lives with distractions, making little gods out of possessions or other people (often our own children). We cover ourselves with them the way the first man and woman clothed themselves with leaves. We pretend we think these things please God. They are “blessings.” Yet we do know better. We know our attention and devotion has slipped down from the Creator to the mere creation, and in knowing this, deep within we live in misery.<br /><br />Paul wrote eloquently of this to the early church in Rome. He <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ro%207:14%20-%208:4&version=NIV">says</a>, "What I want to do, I do not do—no, the evil that I do not want to do, this I do." So even Paul—a true believer if ever anybody was—even that same Paul, still sins. He goes on to say, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" And here the word to focus on is <strong><em>rescue</em></strong>. Think about this: powerhouse believer though Paul is, still he needs to be rescued. What can “rescue” mean to Paul if not the ongoing work of God’s grace in his daily life? And this is proven with his very next words: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!” followed quickly by those most welcome words in the entire Bible: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."<br /><br />Jesus said, “If anybody loves me, he will obey my teaching," yet how can we obey Him while we are in these wretched bodies of death? Obedience is the only right response to the grace of the cross, yet only through God's grace is obedience possible. It’s no good pretending. Since God knows us better than we know ourselves, we might as well admit there’s something in us which still longs to sin sometimes. Our desperate need for rescue did not end at the cross. On the contrary, for a true believer, the cross was only the beginning. Something in us remains out of balance with the cosmos. The cross only makes us more aware of it, aware of how wretched we remain without God’s grace—without God’s stooping down to us—and how desperately we still need His grace every second of every minute of every day.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">This then is the paradox:<br />“...you have been saved, through faith...not by works...” (Eph 2:8-10)<br />Yet also...<br />“...a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)<br /><br /></span></strong>Paradox is exactly what we should expect when striving to draw near Almighty God, whose <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ro%2011:33-36&version=NIV">mysteries</a> are “beyond tracing out.” And as always, when faced with such a paradox concerning Him, the answer is never to pick one side over the other, but rather to say, “Yes” to both. “Yes” to God’s grace working through faith in the cross, and “Yes” to God’s grace still working through faith even now, to rescue us from our bodies of death, to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil%202:12-13&version=NIV">guide</a> us as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.”<br /><br />If you have tried to live a Christian life and failed and failed again, here is my advice: stop trying.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Turn your eyes upon Jesus,<br />Look full in His wonderful face,<br />And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,<br />In the light of His Glory and Grace.</strong></span></em><br /> <a href="http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Turn_Your_Eyes_upon_Jesus/"><span style="color:#ffffff;"> (Helen Lemmel)</span></a></div><br />In trying so hard you are only looking to yourself, your puny efforts, your little plans, your hopeless strategy. Or you are hiding behind those tiny idols you have made in life. Step out from behind there. Be naked before God so God can <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ro%2013:12-14&version=NIV">clothe </a>you with his Son. Look to Jesus. Look only to Him. Focus on His love for you, and let His love reignite that glorious flame of love you felt when you first believed. Christian, it simply is not possible to be rescued by His love while you are so distracted. So stop already. Just stop, and look to Jesus...Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-78062182188051795342010-02-27T10:34:00.000-08:002010-03-01T12:43:55.561-08:00Filthy Church<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S4lporb8vdI/AAAAAAAAAbg/wErUAmdRalk/s1600-h/Country+Church+-+022810.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5442997772229590482" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 144px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S4lporb8vdI/AAAAAAAAAbg/wErUAmdRalk/s400/Country+Church+-+022810.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">The American church is dying.</span> The signs are everywhere: rampant hedonism, materialism, infidelity, superficiality, mediocrity, cowardice, compromise...the list goes on and on, but the one charge we must not level at the church is the one which seems most common.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Hypocrisy is the favorite explanation given by people who claim to follow Jesus and yet will not go to church. But it misses the whole point.</strong></span><br /><br /><br />This lovely photo is what I used to think of church. A place. A thing. Now when I think "church" I think people. Not “people” in a general sense, but specific people. Names. Faces. People I belong to. I am theirs and they are mine. My place in the cosmos--my designed purpose--is to serve them, which is to say to do love to them or be love for them in a sacrificial way. My purpose and place does not change if they are prideful, hurtful, or hypocritical. As Jesus said, they are my <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%2012:49-50&version=NIV">family</a>. Most families have their dysfunctional side. Even so, most families are deeply committed to each other. Most of us have at least one family member who drives us crazy sometimes, yet we would die for them. In exactly the same way, my role is to love the church--these particular people--just as they are, just as Jesus does.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Church is just that simple, just that wonderful, just that hard. Love in spite of everything. When it comes to ideas about organized religion, all else is a human construct and a lie.<br /><br /></span></strong>Because “church” means people, it is possible to maintain a humble and hopeful spirit while obeying the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=heb%2010:23-25&version=NIV">command</a> which is “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” And make no mistake; it <em><strong>is</strong></em> a command. Yet some who claim to follow Jesus treat it as a suggestion. Jesus said, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2014:23-24&version=NIV">"If you love me you will obey what I command."</a> Could He be more clear? We follow Jesus by obeying his commands. And what is <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%2022:37-39&version=NIV">his greatest command</a>? To love the Lord with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So who are the hypocrites? People at least trying to live together in relationship even with their flaws, or those who claim to follow Jesus Christ but will not even try?<br /><br />I wrote my most recent novel, <em><a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/LostMission_reviews.html">Lost Mission</a></em>, out of a sense of revelation, an understanding I have gained. It expresses an old hope I had, a desire to find a church (a place, a thing) where I could experience God without distractions. It explores the depth of meaning in the fact that those distractions end up being the very places where the Lord awaits me. Human frailty is the stuff of God on earth. Whose image are we made in anyway, if not the image of a man upon a cross? God does His best work through the feebleness of human hands, the superficiality of our prayers, and the inadequacy of our offerings. When I am weak, then I am strong. The Lord creates His church whenever and wherever flawed believers come together intentionally to praise and worship Him. God doesn’t need perfection. He doesn’t expect it. He knows us better than that, yet He stoops down to us anyway. Should we not do the same to each other?<br /><br />It is not good for man to be alone. We were created to worship God in community. It is part of why God came to earth in a manger, why He endured temptation, why Jesus <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%202:1-11&version=NIV">partied</a> with us and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2011:32-44&version=NIV">grieved</a> with us and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt%2021:12-13&version=NIV">fought</a> with us and chose the gruesome mess that was the cross. He showed us that the Way is pure and holy, but it is not clean and easy. We can praise the Lord in solitary moments, but anyone who prefers the false perfection of solitude to the mess (and filth, sometimes) of church deludes himself. God will not be worshipped in that way, because it is not possible to love the Lord with all my heart unless I love my hedonistic, materialistic, cheating, superficial, mediocre, cowardly and compromising neighbor, who is so often a reflection of the me myself whom I so love to love.<br /><br />So yes, the signs are truly everywhere: the American church is dying, and to save it we must join it. There is no other way.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-17344945618919195192010-02-17T10:48:00.000-08:002010-02-17T11:31:18.983-08:00Well Isn’t That Special?<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S3w-47sZnuI/AAAAAAAAAbY/Qh8blhMO2Qc/s1600-h/The+Church+Lady+-+021710.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5439291597774233314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 154px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 185px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S3w-47sZnuI/AAAAAAAAAbY/Qh8blhMO2Qc/s400/The+Church+Lady+-+021710.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Irony sometimes cracks me up.</span> I belong to several email lists (loops, whatever) and on one of them recently I wrote a comment about Christians who claim to read fiction, but who actually seem to enjoy it mainly for the chance it offers to be offended. Most novelists working in the world of Christian fiction have received outraged letters from these people. In my email comment I referred to them as “dreaded blue haired church ladies.” Of the 1,000 or so other people on the list, most understood exactly what I meant (probably they were <a href="http://www.danacarvey.net/carpics.html">Dana Carvey</a> fans), but a tiny and very vocal group took me to task for using that phrase. They responded to the entire loop, saying one should not reinforce negative stereotypes; one should be more sensitive to other people’s feelings. Oh, you would have thought I’d called Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton the “N” word!<br /><br />One of the funny things about irony is the way it’s usually lost on those who need it most. How I laughed when I realized these people had been so easily offended by words I used to describe people who are easily offended! But then I started getting private emails. People I had never heard of wrote to say they had stopped speaking their minds on the list out of fear that they too would be slapped down. Soon I realized there was a deeper problem than simply a few folks who wear their feelings on their sleeves. The situation wasn’t funny anymore. To understand why, I think we have to start with this:<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">The Bible is not a rulebook for life; it’s a book of higher principles, which are illustrated by examples we too often mistake for rules.</span></strong><br /><br />Consider the Internet and especially email, for example. They can be wonderful things. I don’t know how I got along without them before. (Just think of how much money it would take to buy a stamp for every note you email today!) What a blessing to be able to fire off notes so quickly...and what a curse. Sometimes emails can be as difficult to control as our tongues.<br /><br />Take a moment to read <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james%203:3-12&version=NIV">what the Bible has to say</a> about this problem, and notice that it offers no rules about emails. Instead it gives a principle which applies perfectly to a technology the author never dreamed possible.<br /><br />This can cut both ways. I believed my words were innocent, of course. I believed the offended people were just oversensitive. But what if they were right? Should I have been more sensitive with my words, in case they reached some actual old lady with blue hair and very strong church affiliations, who might have had her feelings hurt because she thought I was referring to her? Well, maybe. Humility is not thinking less about yourself; it’s thinking more of others. So maybe I wasn’t thinking enough about the real “blue haired church ladies” out there.<br /><br />If so, it leads to another principle that applies.<br /><br /><em>"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”</em> (Matthew 18:15-17) NIV<br /><br />If we are offended by someone’s words in an email, taking them to task for it and copying an entire list of others is like stepping up behind the podium in a church sanctuary and accusing someone by name of a sin before the entire congregation. How strange that people who would never dream of doing that except as an absolute last resort can be so quick to do it via email. What a shame we don’t apply Jesus’ principle instead.<br /><br />Similarly, in any public exchange of ideas such as an email list (or a blog comment), we Christians ought to guard our words as closely as we ought to guard our tongues. While the Bible says a lot about controlling speech and nothing about how to write an email, the principle applies equally to both. “In your anger, do not sin” as Paul commanded the Ephesians. He might just as well have written, “In your offense, do not email.”<br /><br /><em>The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.</em> (Proverbs 18:21) NIVAthol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-72342025726906060092010-02-05T07:21:00.001-08:002010-02-05T07:57:24.887-08:00It's Torah Time!<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S2w9kIf0mmI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/iUtkvMKD8yI/s1600-h/Torah+-+020510.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434786541294885474" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 161px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 172px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S2w9kIf0mmI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/iUtkvMKD8yI/s400/Torah+-+020510.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Where do you live?</span> If you're anywhere near Laguna Beach, CA, I'd love to meet you. I'll be teaching a 13 week series on my book, <em><a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/TGAM_reviews.html">The Gospel according to Moses</a></em>, every Thursday night at 7:00. We're meeting at The Little Church by the Sea. You can get directions <a href="http://www.lagunachurchbythesea.org/index2.html">here</a>. Once you arrive, go around behind the sanctuary and through the gates into the courtyard. Look for us in the large meeting room (it will be the one with the lights on). Be sure to introduce yourself!<br /><div></div><br /><div><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;"><em>The Gospel according to Moses</em> is a bestselling memoir about my five years studying the Torah with the rabbis at the nation's second largest Reform Jewish congregation. I was the only Christian in regular attendance among about 100 Jews. During the first six months of so, only the senior rabbi and the man who asked me to attend knew I was a Christian, so I got a brutally honest peek at what Jews really think of Christians. After I "came out," I was warmly welcomed, and the next few years <span style="color:#ffffff;">revolutionized</span> my faith.</span></strong></div><br /><div></div><div>The subtitle is <em>What My Jewish Friends Taught Me About Jesus</em>, and that pretty much sums up the content of the book. I learned more about Christianity from Jews during those five years than I've learned from Christians in my entire life, not because the Jews taught me intentionally, of course, but because they challenged me to dig so deeply into the doctrine that were discussed every <em>Shabbat</em>. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:</div><br /><div></div><div><em>"Being a conservative Christian at a liberal Jewish temple has never been easy or painless, but I have accepted the cost because my religion teaches that constructive growth is worth a little pain. (James 1:2) Key positions of Christianity have been strongly disputed almost every week at Chever Torah by highly intelligent people who know the Scriptures well and find very different truths there. At first I responded to the challenges with dogmatic inflexibility, experiencing a range of unpleasant emotions from anger to anxiety. Only God’s subtle prodding can explain why I kept returning. Then somehow—again, I believe this can only be explained as an act of God—I found the ability to set aside my preconceived notions and truly hear the new ideas these Jews tossed back and forth. From that moment on, the people of Chever Torah began to coach me in that decidedly Jewish pastime: wrestling with God. Now, after years of Bible study among them, I have learned to think about important things like faith and obedience, justice and mercy, and rebellion and redemption in Jewish ways, and in so doing I have found deeper meanings within every word uttered by Jesus and his apostles." </em></div><br /><div></div><div>Copies will be available for you at my cost, and of course I'd be delighted to autograph yours.</div><br /><div></div><div>The study I experienced among the Jews was unlike anything I've ever known in a church. It was passionate, intellectually challenging, sometimes irreverent, and above all, inspiring. In the series I'll be teaching, I'll do my best to recreate that powerful experience. I hope you can come!</div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-83893584777860734622010-02-02T07:41:00.000-08:002010-02-02T12:07:54.089-08:00God Laughs<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S2hMqPzPKsI/AAAAAAAAAbI/5Yfk4UPWXIk/s1600-h/Praying+Mannequin+-+020210.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433677239102155458" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 129px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 140px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S2hMqPzPKsI/AAAAAAAAAbI/5Yfk4UPWXIk/s400/Praying+Mannequin+-+020210.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">It’s so easy to forget the way of things.</span> Months ago I began to ask God to “enlarge my territory.” It’s the prayer of Jabez, which many will recognize as the title of a best selling <a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Prayer-of-Jabez/Bruce-Wilkinson/e/9781590524756/?itm=1&USRI=prayer+of+jabez">book</a>. I haven’t read the book, but of course I read the Bible quite a bit and there it says...<br /><br /><em>Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request.</em> (1 Chronicles 4:10) NIV<br /><br />This, it seems to me, is an excellent prayer, and the fact that God answered with a "Yes" seems to indicate he thinks so, too. As <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%207:9-12&version=NIV">Jesus said</a> just before giving us his famous Golden Rule, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?”<br /><p><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">So “Lord, enlarge my territory” has been on my lips for months, and I have been confident that God would answer. But forgetting the way of things, I made a big mistake.<br /></span></strong><br />I’ve mentioned here before that there was a terrible error made in the launch of my latest novel. In the publishing business, the usual path to success lies in building anticipation for a book before it hits the stores, but in this case no advance copies were sent to critics or to bloggers, so for the first time in my career a novel received no print reviews whatsoever. Most of my fellow bloggers didn’t even have a chance to read the novel and review it until it had already been published. When added to the fact that 2009 was perhaps the worst sales year on record for the entire publishing industry, this meant the novel was pretty much dead on arrival. Not the direction you hope your career will take after seven books in print.<br /><br />It seemed prayer was the only marketing plan that could possibly yield results. Remembering Jabez, I began to ask God for more territory. And here is where I made my big mistake: what I really meant was, “Let me sell more books.”<br /><br />Over the months as I prayed, I began to ask myself if I was ready. A sad story hit the headlines of a man with the wonderful name of <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35142880/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/">Abraham Shakespeare</a>, whose life was ruined and then lost when he won $31 million dollars. It’s <a href="http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/8lotteryWinnersWhoLostTheirMillions.aspx">common</a> for lottery winners say the money ruined their life. I began to wonder what would happen to me if God worked a miracle and this latest novel sold a million copies. Could I handle it? Could I withstand the temptation to take the credit? Or would my territory become too large? Would my pride get me lost in all that extra space?<br /><br />In asking these questions, I remembered why I started writing in the first place. “Write what you know,” as the common wisdom goes, and when you get down to the heart of life, I know nothing that really matters except “<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%202:1-5&version=NIV">Christ, and him crucified</a>.” So I write about the Lord, for the Lord, in the hope that people who don’t know how beautiful he is might be moved a step closer to falling in love with him as I have, and people who do know him as I do might be moved to love him even more. And suddenly one day I realized I had been praying for the wrong “territory”.<br /><br />I could have asked God to let me spread his love far and wide. I could have asked him to let me share eternal life with people who are lost and dying. I could have asked for those wonderful, amazing things and left the details up to him, but there I was, praying to sell books. Such a petty little prayer!<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">“Man plans; God laughs” as the old Yiddish saying goes. It’s so easy to forget the way of things, so easy to ask God to bless my plan, instead of asking him to reveal the blessings he has planned.</span></strong></p><p>When I quit praying with book sales in mind and started simply asking the Lord to enlarge my territory <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%206:10&version=NIV">any way he wished</a>, some interesting “coincidences” began to happen. A pastor at my church told me the elders want me to start preaching there soon. I was asked to teach a series based on <a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/TGAM_reviews.html">The Gospel according to Moses</a>, thinking maybe ten or fifteen people would come, but when the series was announced, <em>twenty percent of the entire congregation signed up</em>. My latest novel may be D.O.A. (or maybe not...who knows?) but now that I’ve remembered the true way of things, my territory seems to grow a little every day.<br /><br />How about you? Are you asking God to bless your puny plans, or are you asking for the kind of miracle only God could plan?</p><br /><div></div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-5058793550070798362010-01-17T18:28:00.000-08:002010-01-18T07:07:36.459-08:00Bad Theology<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S1PSGypLzSI/AAAAAAAAAbA/h_nCveR6WYs/s1600-h/Leaving+Sodom+-+Louis+de+Caulery+-+011710.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427912990027140386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 177px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 252px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S1PSGypLzSI/AAAAAAAAAbA/h_nCveR6WYs/s400/Leaving+Sodom+-+Louis+de+Caulery+-+011710.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">They say a blog entry should be short,</span> but what can you do when a man like Pat Robertson causes such a mess? Some things take a while to clean up. Hopefully you’ll bear with me.<br /><br />If you somehow missed it, you can read the text of Pat’s comments and see the video <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0110/Robertson_Haiti_cursed_since_Satanic_pact.html?showall">here</a>. To be fair, he said these things in the context of a broader report in which he expressed sympathy for the Haitian people, and it was part of a fund raising segment for earthquake relief, so I’m not going to comment on his intentions. Pat Robertson may have genuine love in his heart for the suffering people in Haiti. But what he said was very wrong.<br /><br />Many people have slammed Pat, of course, and I hate to pile on too, but to my dismay, some friends of mine—well-known Christian authors who should know better—seem open to the idea that Pat was right. “Look at all the times God punished other nations with disasters in the Old Testament,” they said to me. “It’s Biblical!”<br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Well, no actually, what Pat Robertson said is not Biblical. On the contrary, it’s heretical.<br /></strong></span><br />Before I mention a few of the many theological arguments against this grave error in thinking, let’s ponder the human cost. If we allow ourselves to start believing any specific natural disaster is the result of any specific nation’s sins, we need not go much further along that same path before we find ourselves calling a specific case of cancer (for example) a punishment from God. After all, in the same way the Bible shows God using disasters to punish nations, so it shows Him physically punishing individuals for their sins. Think of <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lev%2010:1-2&version=NIV">Nadab and Abihu</a>, or <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%205:1-10&version=NIV">Ananias and his wife</a>. The Bible does indeed teach us God has sometimes supernaturally entered history to physically punish both nations and individuals for their sins. It also says <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev%209:13-21&version=NIV">God will do it again one day</a>. But how heartless it would be to use that as an excuse to tell a woman she just lost her breast to cancer as a punishment from God!<br /><br />That is essentially what Pat Robertson said to the Haitian people the other day. Maybe he simply has a very inappropriate sense of timing. Maybe the love is there. I don’t know his motivation, but I do know there are grave dangers in what he said. Judgmentalism. Legalism. Isolationism. Fatalism. So much evil can flow from the prideful notion that we are equipped to know a disaster on any level, national or individual, is a particular punishment or admonishment from God.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Ask yourself: after we have moved from attributing God’s wrath to nations to attributing it to individuals, what is the next step? Why, imposing divine wrath on God’s behalf, of course.<br /></span></strong><br />Nineteen men and women were hanged and one was crushed to death in <a href="http://www.salemwitchtrials.com/salemwitchcraft.html">Salem</a> because of a natural extension of this theology. Here’s how the logic went: “The Bible says God blesses good people in this life, and curses bad people, and I am being good yet bad things are still happening, so the neighbors must be devil worshippers.” After all, the same Bible that tells us about God’s use of natural disasters also <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2022:18&version=KJV">says</a>, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And sure enough, following exactly that same logic after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson famously <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2001/09/You-Helped-This-Happen.aspx">blamed</a> their neighbors, their fellow Americans who are “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians.”<br /><br />So much for the human cost. Let’s look at this heresy of Pat’s from a Biblical perspective, beginning with the fact that the Bible <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eccl%207:15&version=NIV">says</a> “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.” Certainly there are <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=prov%203:33&version=NIV">places</a> where the scriptures tell us the righteous will be blessed and the wicked will be cursed, but <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eccl%208:14&version=NIV">elsewhere</a> it says the righteous sometimes get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get the rewards of the righteous.<br /><br />This is not a contradiction. It simply means we don’t know nearly enough about God’s intentions to be able to connect any person’s behavior with the earthly blessings or curses he receives. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2033:19&version=NIV">God has his own reasons</a> for giving easy lives to some and trials to others. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%202:11&version=NIV">We can never fully understand those reasons</a>.<br /><br />This should be especially obvious to Christians. After all, Jesus taught us that our righteousness will often lead to suffering. We are <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%2016:24&version=NIV">told</a> we must pick up a cross to follow Him, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2016:33&version=NIV">and</a> “In this world you will have trouble.” If God-fearing believers are guaranteed suffering in this life (and we are) where is the logic in Robertson’s statement that Haiti’s suffering is a curse for devil worship? Isn’t it just as possible, based on what the Bible says, that this earthquake is a cross for the faithful Haitian Christians to bear?<br /><br />In the wake of Robertson’s comments, some have pointed to passages such as <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lev%2018:24-25&version=NIV">this one</a>, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=nu%2035:33-34&version=NIV">this one</a> and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jer%2016:17-18&version=NIV">this one</a> to assert that humanity’s sins can “defile” the “land” though sins such as sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood and idolatry. Read those scriptures carefully and you’ll see it’s a giant theological stretch to apply them to any "land" except the promised land of Israel, but never mind that for now. Let's pretend "the land" means any land, anywhere, just for the sake of conversation.<br /><br />If any land could still be "defiled" by sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood or idolatry, then every land on earth would be pretty much equally defiled. After all, what nation can claim it is innocent of those sins? Yet few nations have ever suffered a natural disaster on the Haitian scale. In fact, many nations which have been "defiled" by those sins have been richly blessed on the whole, including the USA of course, despite our rampant adultery, homosexuality, history of genocide against the American Indian and the African slave, and widespread worship of the almighty dollar and all the idols it can buy. So while the idea of cursed land makes for a great scenario if you’re a novelist, it just doesn't have any basis in observable history.<br /><br />Another flaw in this theology is found in the root of the word translated in all those verses as "defile." That root is <em>tame</em>, the same Hebrew word translated elsewhere as "unclean" to describe houses where a person has died, bowls which have contained unclean food, chairs where an unclean person has sat, and of course unclean foods, among many other inanimate things. We know from <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2010:9-15&version=NIV">Peter's famous vision</a> of the sheet filled with animals that God has made all foods "clean." That's one of the proof texts used in support of the doctrine that Christians are no longer required to observe the letter of the Mosaic law. Funeral homes, dishes, chairs and pork are no longer "defiled" for us. Would this be true of everything inanimate except "the land" itself? Of course not.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">The idea that the land of Haiti was somehow “defiled” centuries ago in a way that caused an earthquake here and now runs counter to everything the New Testament teaches about the law. </span></strong><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;"><br /></span></strong>If we apply those Hebrew verses to "the land" of Haiti, then we have no consistent justification for disobedience to anything else the Mosaic law has to say about cleanliness and uncleanliness. Are we really prepared to return to that? Or do we <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%208:1-4&version=NIV">agree with Paul</a> that "...through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death"?<br /><br />Moving on, consider <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2013:1-5&version=NIV">a similar discussion</a> that once took place between some Jews and a rabbi. Rather than comment on it I’ll just quote the conversation, with a few minor modifications to make it more obvious how it relates to the topic at hand (please do compare my version to the original):<br /><br /><em>“Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the New Yorkers whose blood Osama bin Laden had mixed with their office building. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these New Yorkers were worse sinners than all the other Americans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those thousands who died in the earthquake in Haiti — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in the Caribbean? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”</em><br /><br /><br />If we ever had any doubt what Jesus meant when he <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%207:1-5&version=NIV">warned</a> us “Do not judge,” this conversation should remove those doubts. Don’t let anybody tell you different: Jesus doesn't want Christians saying the kind of thing Pat Robertson said the other day.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-55054172776740504492010-01-08T15:49:00.000-08:002010-01-08T16:01:48.885-08:00You Can Be a Winner!<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S0fHPpNhIBI/AAAAAAAAAa4/wha0hK4scCI/s1600-h/Jumping+Woman+010810.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424523347765567506" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 144px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 182px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S0fHPpNhIBI/AAAAAAAAAa4/wha0hK4scCI/s400/Jumping+Woman+010810.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Win autographed copies my novels!</span> Tim George, over at <a href="http://www.tegeorge.com/unveiled/?page_id=478">Unveiled</a>, has a great contest going. Here’s a quote from his blog:<br /><br />“To kick off 2010, Unveiled is going to give an autographed library of Athol Dickson novels to one lucky winner. Each week two questions will be added to this page. Points will be given for correct answers and comments left at appropriate reviews posted throughout January. Just follow the link after each question to find the answer. Email your completed list of answers no sooner than Feb 1st and no later than Feb 5th, 2010. Be sure and leave a comment to let us know you plan on entering the contest.”<br /><br />So far there haven’t been many comments, so I’d say your odds are good... Have fun!Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-39193183751942566942010-01-06T15:20:00.000-08:002010-01-06T16:24:18.427-08:00God of Discipline<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S0UlTsAPfBI/AAAAAAAAAaw/1xG-SY1CKI8/s1600-h/Homeless+Man+With+Bible+-+010610.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423782346397547538" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 288px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 191px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/S0UlTsAPfBI/AAAAAAAAAaw/1xG-SY1CKI8/s400/Homeless+Man+With+Bible+-+010610.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Do you worship discipline?</span> Two days before the Christmas that just passed, I had the privilege of giving a kind of commencement speech to a group of men who were graduating from a Salvation Army rehabilitation center. All of the men had been at war for six months against the powerful urge to drink or to do drugs, and all of them were about to leave the program to continue the battle in a hostile world. I was asked to speak because several staff members of the center had read <a href="http://www.atholdickson.com/TheCure_reviews.html"><em>The Cure</em></a>, and thought I might have something useful to say to their graduating residents. That novel has now become a favorite in several rehab centers that I know of. Probably they like it because it rings true. I wrote it from personal experience. In the heady flower child days of my late teens and early 20’s I did a lot of drugs and drinking, and developed a serious “problem” with amphetamines. I was also homeless for a time. But since I don’t struggle with alcoholism and it’s been decades since I had the urge to do drugs, some might wonder what makes me think I can offer meaningful advice to people in a rehabilitation program. <span style="color:#000000;">The truth is I fight the very same battle every single day, for I am just as deeply addicted as any of those men, and you know what?</span><br /><span style="color:#000000;"></span><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">If you have a pulse, you’re an addict, too.<br /></span></strong><br />Sin is nothing more than the original addiction. It reveals itself in countless ways, but make no mistake about it: we’re all in the same condition, one way or another. So here is what I said to those brave warriors, a few words about the cure, offered in the hope that it might help you, too...<br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">***</span></strong><br /></div>Everything I’m about to say assumes you men who are about to leave this place are Christians. If you are not a Christian, then what I’ll say won’t make much sense to you, and all I can offer you in the way of advice is, come to your senses and submit yourself to Jesus Christ. You do not want to be on your own when you walk out of here.<br /><br />It may be that some of you were not Christians when you first walked into this place, so you may only recently have learned about God’s amazing grace. In that case, let’s make sure you fully understand the thing that saved you. Many people think grace is mercy, but they aren’t the same at all. Mercy is when you’re guilty and the judge decides not to throw the book at you. Mercy can actually be a bad thing, if it comes at the expense of justice for the wife and child whom you abandoned for cocaine, or the pedestrian you hit while driving drunk, or the shopkeeper you robbed to get a bottle or a fix. But grace is always good. Grace is when the judge does the right thing, when he goes ahead and throws the book at you because you’re guilty as charged, but then he comes down from the bench and suffers your punishment for you. And as every Christian knows, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us. That’s the whole point of the cross. God sentenced us to death for what we’ve done, which was only right and just, but Jesus took our punishment, so we are innocent in God’s eyes now.<br /><br />Now, what does God expect from us in return for this? Absolutely nothing. God’s son died for us. How could we ever pay that back? We’d have to die to make it up to Him, and what good would that do when the whole point of the cross was to save us from our punishment? So it makes no sense to think we could do anything “in return” for this amazing grace. We can accept it. Period. That’s all. We can’t repay God. We can’t serve him. We can’t even obey him.<br /><br />Yes, you heard me right. I just said we can’t obey God. But before you start thinking they let some kind of a pagan in here to talk to you, some kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing, let me quickly mention that the Apostle Paul said exactly the same thing in the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%207:15-24&version=NIV">Bible</a>. He said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.... What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”<br /><br />See? Paul said it a long time before I did. We cannot obey. I don’t know if Paul was an alcoholic or addict, but he sure sounds like it when he says, “What I hate, I do.” I hear that, and it’s like he’s quoting from the <a href="http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-121_en.pdf">Big Book</a> (although of course it’s really the other way around). He’s saying, “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” He’s saying he “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself,” and he came up short. So if you’ve ever secretly felt guilty because it seems like obeying God is still impossible for you even though you’re a Christian now, if you think you must be weaker or more flawed than other Christians, damaged goods, then I want you to remember this: even the Apostle Paul agreed with the first step. Even Paul found his life unmanageable. Does that mean he was an alcoholic or a drug addict? No. But Paul was an addict all right. We’re all of us addicted to some kind of sin, one way or another, and as far as God is concerned there are many secret sin addictions which are just as bad as doping or drinking.<br /><br />So, Christians, since we were powerless over our sins before we trusted Jesus, and we remain powerless over our sins today, obviously it’s a waste of time to ask, “What can I do?” But did you notice that question Paul asked at the end? He asked, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” That’s the smart question to be asking. Who will rescue me? Because if there’s no way you can win a fight, you need to be rescued. And praise the Lord, when a Christian begs for help, he will indeed be rescued. Every Christian believes along with <a href="http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/history/l/aa041597.htm">Bill and Bob</a> that there is “a Power greater than ourselves [who] could restore us to sanity.” Every Christian knows our Higher Power is not some wimpy little god “as we understand him,” but a mighty god we could never understand. Every Christian knows God personally, because we have met our higher power in the flesh on the cross. And if Jesus saved us then, He will go on saving us now, unless we start putting faith in our own will power instead of having faith in Him.<br /><br />Listen now, this is important: Jesus didn’t give us power over sin. Jesus is our power over sin. What this means is, God’s grace wasn’t finished at the cross, it remains available for us right now, this instant, in every moment that we live. We were <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians%202:8-9&version=NIV">saved</a> by grace through faith in Jesus, and not by our own works. We continue to be saved in exactly that same way. What good news this is! What a relief!<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">The secret to a happy Christian life is not to work harder at being sober. In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s to let Jesus do the work for you.<br /></span></strong><br />What does this mean in the day-to-day challenge to be sober? It’s very simple. When the devil sends that first little tickle—you all know the one I mean—you have just two choices. You can put your faith in your own willpower, or you can put your faith in Jesus Christ. If you tell yourself “Be strong,” if you put your faith in willpower, you will surely fall. But if you start praying, if you say “Jesus, I can’t win this fight! I’m too weak! Rescue me!” then the Lord will surely step right in to rescue you.<br /><br />Does this mean Jesus will remove the urge to drink or use completely? Usually not. But you know what? If God leaves that urge in us, it’s because—hear me now, this is really important—if God leaves that urge in us, it’s because that urge is what keeps us turning back to Jesus.<br /><br />We don’t know exactly what drove Paul to cry out, “Rescue me!” but we do know he wrote in the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20cor%2012:7-10&version=NIV">Bible</a> about having something he called a “thorn in my flesh,” and a “messenger from Satan.” Sounds like an addiction, doesn’t it? Paul says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Was Paul disappointed that God refused to take away his thorn, his Satan’s messenger? No. On the contrary he wrote, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.” But why did Paul boast about his weaknesses? Here’s the answer in his words again: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”<br /><br />Hear that famous line again, Christians. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s your key to a successful life, regardless of your sin of choice. Probably most of you have begged and pleaded with the Lord to take away your addiction. Since you’re here, that means God said “No” to you, just as he did to Paul. And like the Apostle Paul, you should praise God for that answer. Think about this carefully.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Do you really want to put your faith in discipline instead of in Jesus Christ?<br /><br /></span></strong>If God took away your sin addiction, would you really be a stronger person, or would you be tempted to think you don’t need Jesus quite as much? Would you be tempted to pray a little less? Read His word a little less? Worship Him a little less? Spend less time with other Christians? Focus on yourself a little more, until you are alone again just as you were before you met him at the cross? Sober, but alone and terribly, terribly lost? Is that really what you want? Is sobriety worth that?<br /><br />Now it’s time for the next battle, and as you prepare to go, I hope you will remember that your weakness makes you strong if you embrace it. Your weakness is a blessing. Don’t fight it; celebrate it, as Paul did. Boast about your weakness and take delight in it, because if you will do that, then your weakness will always point you back to Jesus.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Think about this carefully: your weakness is a blessing.<br /><br /></span></strong>Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself because you have to fight this battle. Instead, pity the person who seems to find it easy to be “good,” who looks like they have life under control. Pity the poor Christian who is “only” addicted to gossip, or “only” surfs porn on the internet in secret, or “only” lusts for money. Those Christians may look clean and sober on the outside, but because their sin addiction is well hidden they can go for years—for all their lives in fact—without ever getting past <a href="http://alcoholism.about.com/library/blmitch11.htm">the first step</a>, without every going beyond the entry-level grace they found on the first day they were saved. You, on the other hand, have a particular thorn in the flesh that’s impossible to ignore, so you’ll always find it easier to embrace your weakness, easier to put your faith in Jesus instead of in your own will power, and easier to walk deeper and deeper into the amazing grace that’s always there to rescue you.Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-3444676354034843342009-12-28T06:55:00.000-08:002009-12-28T12:25:52.671-08:00To Steal, Perchance to Tithe<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/SzkR-ew0pgI/AAAAAAAAAao/apNJjTXYl70/s1600-h/Money+122809.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420383391624504834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 288px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/SzkR-ew0pgI/AAAAAAAAAao/apNJjTXYl70/s400/Money+122809.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Sometimes art imitates life,</span> but sometimes it’s the other way around. Those of you who have already read <em>Lost Mission</em> may remember Tucker Rue, the founder of a storefront mission in a poor Southern California barrio. Tucker is concerned about the American church's tithing problem, and I think he’s got good reason to be worried. A survey by the <a href="http://www.barna.org/">Barna Group</a> famously determined that only 6 percent of Americans who called themselves “born again Christians” gave 10 percent or more of their income to churches and charities during the recession of 2002. (For more on stingy people who claim to follow Jesus, see Ron Sider’s 1977 classic, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Christians-Age-Hunger-Anniversary/dp/0849914248#noop"><em>Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger</em></a>.) I haven’t seen statistics on what the current recession has done to Christian giving, but this is <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2003/jun6.html">an age old problem</a>, which surely will remain with us until the end of days. In <em>Lost Mission</em>, Tucker Rue decides to resolve it by stealing from rich Christians to give to the poor.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">A missionary who steals to help the poor . . . does that shock you?<br /></span></strong><br />That was certainly my intention when I wrote the Tucker Rue character. In Flannery O'Conner's classic book on writing Christian fiction, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Manners-Occasional-Flannery-OConnor/dp/0374508046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262019395&sr=1-1">Mystery and Manners</a></em>, she said a novelist must sometimes use “violent literary means to get his vision across to a hostile audience, and the images and actions he creates may seem distorted and exaggerated.” Following that strategy I invented Tucker Rue as a wild exaggeration, a larger-than-life example of the bad mistake we Christians often make by trying to solve spiritual problems with earthly strategies. But a Christian minister who steals from those who will not tithe . . . even with O’Connor’s advice in mind I wondered if readers would consider it too outrageous.<br /><br />Now it turns out Tucker Rue may not have been violent enough, or distorted or exaggerated or outrageous enough, because believe it or not, there’s a Christian minister in the real world who is advocating much the same approach. <a href="http://www.breitbart.tv/vicar-advises-hard-pressed-parishioners-to-shoplift/">Check it out</a>.<br /><br />At first I watched that video and marveled that a vicar would seriously suggest shoplifting for the poor, but after giving it some thought I decided there isn’t much difference between that and hoarding God’s blessings for myself. In <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2025&version=NIV">Matthew 25</a>, Jesus makes it crystal clear that God has blessed me so I can bless the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. Jesus says to the extent that I give to needy people I give to God, and to the extent that I withhold blessings from them, I withhold from God.<br /><div></div><br /><div><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">In other words, a stingy Christian steals from God.</span></strong><br /><br />With countless blessings in my life, as I consider year-end giving during this final week of 2009, that thought really hit home.</div>Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8748170852538098656.post-68086384762781286742009-12-21T07:26:00.000-08:002009-12-21T07:47:41.381-08:00Hope During Advent<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/Sy-X9xUtN3I/AAAAAAAAAag/jWJiTOBs74M/s1600-h/Nativity+scene+-+122109.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417715964217997170" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 216px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 231px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q4ZXhpOV0Cg/Sy-X9xUtN3I/AAAAAAAAAag/jWJiTOBs74M/s400/Nativity+scene+-+122109.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;">Feelings of loss</span> and loneliness tend to well up in me at this time of year, which is ironic. For a Christian, next to Easter this should be the most joyous season. But I find my thoughts straying back to Christmas past, and longer dinner tables flanked by laughing loved ones, now absent.<br /><br />Something a friend said to me today reminded me of a TV show about D-day I once saw. There were interviews with old veterans who had survived that terrible slaughter, interspaced with film clips shot in the midst of battle. One old man described being on the beach, taking shelter from deadly machine gun fire behind a tiny obstruction. Another soldier beside him began to crack up. The old man in the interview said, “I just told him, ‘Think positive, man,’ and we kept going.”<br /><br />The remarkable courage of that statement has always stayed with me. In the end, it really is that simple. You think positive, and keep going. And in a Christian’s case of course, thinking positive is thinking Jesus. I am so grateful for the hope found in the manger, and in the empty tomb.<br /><br /><em>“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”</em> (Philippians 4:8-9)<br /><br />Happy birthday Jesus!Athol Dicksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946058024343277304noreply@blogger.com3