The Hope of Christmas

The Hope of Christmas

Hope.  We live in a broken world where stock markets crash, loved ones suffer, friends and family grow apart, and everything from international politics to stop lights are beyond our control.  It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s called “Murphy’s Law” or the second law of thermodynamics; everything seems to breakdown.  Each day we witness a thousand injustices that cry out to be fixed.  And what can we do?  For this brokenness extends even to ourselves as we fail to live up to all that we ought to be.  We are all clocks that keep imperfect time.  This is not meant to be overly pessimistic, because there is much that is good and beautiful in the world, but we can all confess, to at least some degree, that there are times when we have our doubts that things will ever truly be right. 

            We all want peace and happiness and we want it so badly that we are willing to place our hope in people, governments, educations, careers, policies, medicines, technologies, financial institutions, and religions that are bound to fail.  But each time we are left disappointed, we still have the gumption to pick ourselves up and find something new to enchant us and believe in.  We willingly ignore all the warnings suggesting that we are only setting ourselves up for more heartache, because we desperately want there to be something more.  We would rather believe in a false hope, pretending it to be real than go on without any hope at all, because hope is necessary for survival when we live in a world such as this.  In a world such as this, often times, hope is all we have. 

Two thousand years ago, there was a small and unimportant nation which was occupied by a foreign power, with customs and laws contrary to its own.  This nation had struggled for its sovereignty from its very inception and had somehow survived countless invasions, political realignments, and even exile.  This nation was told by God that they were His chosen people, but all the evidence pointed to the contrary.  What importance could God possibly have for a tiny farming nation that had been suppressed by four different civilizations far mightier than themselves during the last four centuries?  Surely if God had wanted to make anything of them He would have done so long before now.  If there ever was a time when they were important in His sight, that time had passed.  Despite any promises given in some lost age, it was apparent to everyone that they were a nation destined to be forgotten by God and enslaved by others. 

As the reality of these sentiments descended on the hearts of some lowly shepherds, a bursting light scattered the night and they were told the best news that man had ever heard.  Christmas is important because it reminds us that there is a true reason to hope in the midst of a thousand evidences to despair.  Christmas assures us that God has not abandoned us to the horror our own devices in a cold and empty universe.  By entering our fallen world, assuming a body of corruption, enduring the afflictions of hunger and disease, feeling the pains of both body and soul, facing the scorns and abuse of men, Christ affirms not only His love for a fallen race, but also the potential for goodness and beauty that rightly belong to creatures once described as “the image of God” once that image is fully restored.

The world did not become perfect when God entered our cosmos, nor did it become so when He returned to heaven in His resurrected body, but let us not think that this means that He has come in vain.  He will complete the work that He has begun.  The story of Christmas tells us that He has come once.  The hope of Christmas promises us that He will come again, and when He does all other hopes will be fulfilled.

An Historical Expose of Western Culture Part II: Modernity

An Historical Exposé of Western Culture: Part II

 

This is the second of at least a three part survey of Western thought.

 

The Modern Age

 

The Modern Age properly begins with the liberating ideas of the Renaissance, and finds development in the Enlightenment, reaches its climax with the Industrial Revolution, and ultimately becomes a victim of the World Wars and their chilling aftermath.  The fundamental project of the Modern era from its very start was the establishment of man as Man.  It sought to free man from the tyranny of a corrupt religion and his enslavement to faith, and it utilized any means necessary to promote this new liberty.  The art work began to be more human again, and their portrayals became less demeaning of human beings and more exalting in the depictions of man.  Michelangelo’s David, stands tall, powerful, proud and confident as he faces his world and is the epitome of Renaissance thought.  Humanism became the new religion (even in its Christian context) and power and freedom became the new virtues.  The world was ready and rightly so to be out from under an enslaving Church that fleeced the masses of their necessities in order to luxuriously indulge in everything they forbid. 

While there were many forces at work in the human liberation movement, none were as powerful as Reason.  Man standing on his own to feet could share the light of Truth as he relied on his knowledge.  Knowledge could dispel the twisted distortions and superstitions that the Church used to rape and steal from its flock.  This is not to suggest that all humanism was anti-Christian, or even anti-Church, but it always sought to elevate man from the frail, sinful, pitiful creature that he was labeled as.  In fact many rationalists sought to validate the central tenants of their religion, namely that there is a good and perfect God.  There was nothing revolutionary about claiming the existence of God.  Many had done so before, but most had done it on the basis of faith, and none had stood so boldly in their own reason as Descartes.  

As man’s ability to think was exercised, he became greater through the discoveries of exploration and the scientific revolution.  Much of his discoveries the old régimes built on faith futily resisted because what man’s new found knowledge showed him was how enslaved he was to their manipulation, control, and lies.  The more knowledge man had the more abilities and freedoms they afforded and by the time of the Enlightenment, the adolescence of Modernity, it took on a secondary goal of killing the need for faith or God altogether.  In its undiluted form it despised faith and its stooping effect on man.  It still wanted its ethics, but on its own foundation of reason.  The works of Immanuel Kant are the magnum opus of Modern Philosophy.  The Enlightenment also sought political freedoms for man and inspired revolutions that reshaped maps on multiple continents.  The Enlighteners new that they had not fully arrived, but felt strongly that they were only a few steps from the top. 

The Industrial Revolution was the final actualization of the Modern Project, if we take into account the legal reforms such as labor laws to be a part of the tidal wave.  Factories, assembly lines, and a host of other efficiencies added material comforts to the political, educational, and religious freedoms that had come before.  Man had arrived.  He had discovered Absolute Truth independent of religion, created new liberties for himself from both religious and secular tyrants, and was now self sufficient in new technologies that further removed his need to depend on God or anything other than himself.  Transportation, health, agriculture, and eventually sex became invincible to the evils that plagued them since the beginning of time.  Once man discovered Truth through his own abilities he became Man, and then he applied his knowledge to every possible arena he could think of in order to expand his horizons and he forgot God in the process because he had no need of God. 

By the time the Modern Era was coming to a head, Nietzsche’s madman could not have been more right when he ran into the market place and cried out “God is dead!”  Modernity at the close of the nineteenth century had accomplished it two main objectives the establishment of man as Man and the death of God… or so we thought.

How are Christians contiunually saved by the Life of Jesus

Essays in Salvation

 

Essay Five: How Christians are continually saved by the Life of Jesus.

 

For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more , having been reconciled we shall be saved by His life. -Romans 5:10

 

I don’t enjoy talking about wrath, especially when it might involve me.  Yet if we take scripture seriously then we must confess that Christians can and do experience God’s wrath.  In our last post we looked at God’s present wrath, which is giving the ungodly (Christian or not) over to stupor and depravity.  The present consequences of sin are slavery to more sin and separation from fellowship or partnering with God and other Christians.[1]  We also looked at God’s future wrath which is in store for those of us as Christians who go on sinning willfully and blatantly deny God’s moral truths.  The future consequences of sin are judgment and a disqualification of commendation from our Savior for a life faithfully lived.[2]  I want to reiterate that no where in scripture does it suggest that a Christian can lose their eternal salvation from Hell to Heaven.  Once we belong to God and are born into His family.  We never stop being His son or daughter no matter how far off we stray.  Like the prodigal son in our Lord’s parable we will always be His.  But like any good parent, the Lord disciplines his children when we disobey.  The focus of this essay is not so much what is God’s wrath: that was the subject matter of the previous one and I encourage you to read it before dwelling on this one, because in order for this one to be seen in proper perspective the other must be in place.  The good news is that we should find this one to be far more encouraging.

 

What else does a Christian need to be rescued from once they have been gifted salvation through the death of Christ?  God’s wrath.  How is a Christian spared from this wrath of depravity and judgment?  The life of Christ.  Paul writes in Roman’s 5:9-10 “Much more then having now been justified by His blood…” We are saved on account of the finished work of Christ on the cross as atonement for our sins.  We have been saved from Hell by Christ’s death, but we have more yet to be saved from. “…we shall be saved from wrath through Him.  For if when were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son much more, having been reconciled we shall be saved by His life.”  Just as we as Christians have been saved by the death of Christ from Hell to Heaven, we continue to be saved from the present and future wrath of God by His life. 

 

We understand the atonement and how Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross in our place makes us righteous before the Father.  But how does His life spare us from the wrath of God?  In short, we participate in the life of Christ by living according to the great commandments of Love God and Love others.  There is no higher law. 

 

Jesus taught his disciples this, hours before his crucifixion.  In the fifteenth chapter in John’s Gospel, He told his followers, that He was the Vine, and they the branches.  And just as a branch can not bear fruit apart from the vine, so we can not bear fruit apart from remaining in His life.  When we participate in the life of Christ, we invite Him to enrich our souls.  And a soul in fellowship with God can not deliberately go against His will.  When we deliberately sin as Christians we step out of that fellowship and are in danger of God’s discipline.  But as we are united with Christ in obedient love we have great joy and abundant life. 

 

As Christians, we are saved from God’s wrath by the life of Christ by emulating the life of our Savior.  As Christians, we are saved from God’s wrath by the life of Christ when we conform our hearts and minds to the desires and thoughts of God.  As Christians, we are saved from God’s wrath by the life of Christ because it is His unending power that breaks our bondage to sin and temptation- and this is something that we can not do on our own.  “… for without Me you can do nothing.”[3]  

 

God is not waiting to destroy us.  He does not desire that His children be punished, but that they experience the full joy of knowing Him by faith.  If God spared us from Hell by dying for us when we were hostile to our Creator, how much more will He spare us from His wrath as we participate in the life of our Savior and His sin-crushing and death-conquering power? 

 

LORD, thank you for the grace upon grace and the continued salvation that you offer us in the life of Christ.  Thank you for saving me just as I am. Thank you for continually saving from who I am to who you created me to be.  Help me to live in You as a faithful and obedient child.  Amen

 

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[1] See Romans 1:18-32 & I John 1

[2] See I Corinthians 3:11-15 & Hebrews 10:26-39

[3] John 15:5

An Historical Expose of Western Culture: Part I

An Historical Exposé of Western Culture: Part I

 We in the West are in the midst of Cultural Revolution.  We exist in that unique place and time at the dawn of the third millennium, where one epoch is waning and another is being born.  The Modern era for all intents and purposes is over, and the Post Modern age has arrived. 

 

This is not to suggest that the ideas, triumphs, and scars of the previous age are nullified.  The momentum of the past six hundred years does not cease in a day or even a decade.  The propulsion of the Middle Ages lasted well into the Renaissance and Enlightenment: if Christian ideals held men’s hearts so long after it’s faith began to be abandoned, then surely elements of reason, empiricism, and humanism can survive at least half a century without Modernity’s nourishment.  Nor is this to proclaim that Post Modernity has reached its maturity.  It is still in its infancy: only beginning to find its voice and wobble around on its legs. 

 

Much has been made about the present revolution for quite some time.[1]  As Christians it is important for us to understand the Western heritage if we are to maintain an active voice for Christ in our culture.  Roughly speaking, if Western Civilization begins with the Greeks then three eras mark its culture: Pre-Modern (1000 B.C.-1400 A.D.), Modern (1400 A.D.-1991 A. D.), and Post Modern (1991 A.D.-present).[2]  While it is true that there is nothing new under the sun so that traces of one era are present in the others, each has dominant characteristics that stand out.   The goal of this essay is to briefly survey the thought forms that made up their respective time. 

 

Pre Modern Times

 

The hallmark of the Pre-Modern culture is the notion that Truth comes outside of man, the traditions of Plato and Aristotle withstanding.  But even Plato and especially Socrates as committed to reason as they were frequently relied upon myths, stories and wild speculations to convince others of truth. It is only a Modern fashion that reads Plato as the champion of reason alone, while ignoring his tendency to incorporate “irrational” components as well.  Aristotle on the other hand was every bit as Modern as Descartes as a rationalist and Newton as an empiricist.  All of this is to say, that Plato transcended his age, while Aristotle was merely ahead of his. 

As mentioned earlier Pre-Modern thinking held that Truth comes externally to man.  Proportionally speaking Pre Modern culture in the West comprises five sixths of its history.  We can subdivide this age into two time periods: “The Classical” which includes the Greek and Roman empires and “The Medieval” which began during the lifetime of St. Augustine with the sack of Rome and lasted until the Renaissance.  The classical age of the Greeks and Romans pursued Truth through superstition.  They followed the gods of Homer, listened to oracles, engaged or withdrew from battle and nullified or verified laws based on the flights of birds or thunder.  Truth in the classical age oscillated with the whims of the gods.  Not everyone in the Greco-Roman era believed in the gods anymore than everyone in the Middle Ages was a Christian.  Many followed the voice of reason and the philosophical traditions of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics and Plotinus.

The medieval period also sought Truth outside of man, but instead of relying on superstition, it found it in revelation.  The triumph of Christianity became official during the reign of Constantine it outlasted Rome when the capital city was sacked in 408 A.D.  Initially divine revelation was limited to the Bible, written 300-350 years earlier, but as Christianity broadened and Popes became emperors as well as priests corruptions began and old superstitions were increasingly baptized under new forms.  Still whether through Church institutions or the Bible, Truth was largely known through divine revelation.  Another important characteristic to note about the Pre Moderns is that they were concerned with wisdom: what is the best life?

Superstition and Revelation were the dominate epistemologies through the return crusaders and what they brought with them: the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.  Scholasticism was already beginning during this time, but found fresh ideas in these two giants.  The Dominican monk, Thomas Aquinas consumed their thoughts and recast them in a Christian mold.  It could be argued that he marks the beginning of the Modern period, because of his elevation of human reason, but this goes too far, because he still asserts that revelation is most important.  However, if there were no Aquinas to begin the debate between reason and revelation the Modern Age would have inevitably been delayed.

 

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[1] Kierkegaard imagined it, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky prophesied it, Sartre and Heidegger initiated it, Francis Schaeffer and Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed it, and we are living it.

[2] Dating eras are always approximations.  Cultural change typically begins with tensions brought up by philosophers, which are then picked up conscious or unconsciously by the artists, the revolution is then transmitted to politics, science, and pop culture at large, and finally business and religion.  This change usually spans a couple hundred years from philosopher to religion.  I have tried to mark the beginning and end of each age with pop culture since that is when the revolution has taken hold of the man or woman on the street and the conservative habits and practices of businesses and faith are usually reactionary.