A friend of mine told me that she believes that everyone is basically good, but through bad experiences they change for the worse. I cannot see it that way. Why did the first bad experience happen?

I believe we have a trace of goodness in our spirits because we are the handiwork of God who created us. However, just being born into this fallen world with the fallen genes of our ancestors wrecks that goodness. We then have to learn to tap into it again. However, we are incapable of doing this on our own.

My point is that we are all born self-centered and have to learn not to be. My friend countered that babies aren't self-centered and that is why she believes that we learn to be self-centered.

Babies are the HEIGHT of self-centeredness. I told her that I have never NOT seen a self-centered baby! They want and want and want. They have to have this or cry. They are VERY self-centered. When was the last time you saw a baby put someone else in front of his own needs? They don't know how to NOT be self-centered. I am not blaming them; I'm merely pointing out an observation.

She argued back that babies only do that because they are trying to survive.

My answer was, "Fine, so they have an excuse. It is still self-centered. They have to learn not to be. They have to be taught to share when they are old enough to understand. If they were born "good" and selfless, there would be no instruction needed. We don't have to teach them to suckle, do we? However, we surely have to teach them to share.

Ironically, on the day of my discussion, I found an ally in the newspaper. Billy Graham writes an article and addressed this. This is what he wrote:

". . . most of our problems have a deeper cause: the greed and selfishness of the human heart. Jesus said, 'For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander' (Matthew 15:19)."

Most people will not want to believe as I do. I didn't want to believe it either. What we want to believe is irrelevant to the truth, however. We live in a fallen world and it is all we can do to daily climb out of it enough to not suffocate from our own odor.

Labels: bojr, evil, good

I was thinking about how different people see God. Then, there are some that do not see him at all. It is amazing to consider that when God's love and laws are written on
all our hearts.

Then I read something written by C.S. Lewis:

"When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favorites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no
favorites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.

You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the
instrument throught which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through
a dirty telescope."
___________________

I think the way I would put this is if our soul or spirit is not alligned in such a way where we can focus on God, then we will only see an ambiguous figure that we cannot
properly distinguish. So, instead we assign OUR ideas of what God should be to Him and miss what He really is and has always been.

Pass the Windex!

Labels: bojr, finding God, vision

I don't if there is enough following on this blog to justify this entry, but I wanted to let anyone that might happen by know that I am not gone from here permanently. To get a slightly better explanation check out my other blog.

Labels: blog

What are we doing - really? We fill up our lives with the most mundane things and act like they are important.

You know what I did over the weekend? Yard work and maintenance. I cleaned the gutters, got up on the roof and removed branches from our dying, scary tree that fell on our outdated roof, cut grass, and cut up wood.

That is just an example from ONE day in my life. How many of those things are really important? We only have a limited number of days in our lifetime. The chief part of our minds are devoted toward dreams (important and not-so-important), finding love, and stressing out over societal expectations. It is all so useless.

Here are just some of the dreams that I have:1. I want to start a ministry that actually helps people in this world and helps them prepare for their spiritual destination.2. I want to be published and be able to finally cross over the line of being a blog owner who routinely is read by a couple dozen people to someone who many would recognize as having something useful to say - something that is relavent to #1 above or at least a distraction from the stressors of life.3. I want to routinely hear the voice of God and be where and what He would have me be so I could have some meaningful use in life.

I am not close enough to ANY of these dreams. I'm not, because for some reason, the grass can't wait another day, or I can't cough up the energy or resources to do them. The ministry? A few years ago, I thought I was getting there. A couple of setbacks and the obligatory excuses and now I seldom even think about it.

What about being published. I can't. My job is too time consuming or my family is too demanding or maybe, just maybe, I can't maintain the confidence to push things aside enough to follow through with it - not yet, anyway.

The voice of God eludes me, too. However, if I am not careful, He will get a few words in. He has before. No, I REALLY don't want to hear Him, do I? Why have the responsibility? Not when there are holes to fill in the back yard or a garage that needs cleaning - you know, the list of things you think about on your death bed with a smile knowing that it was life well-lived.

So I run and worry. I worry that I won't sell my house or about my family's health. I stress over the fact that I have four automibles but none of them have my confidence to take a two-hour road trip or I fret over the fact that I have to report to jury duty tomorrow, or about my meetings at work next week.

Ironically, after writing this, God gave me this little gem from my daily devotions. It is from Oswald Chambers and based on Proverbs 29:18:

There is a difference between an ideal and a vision. An ideal has no moral inspiration; a vision has. The people who give themselves over to ideals rarely do anything. A man's conception of Deity may be used to justify his deliberate neglect of his duty. Jonah argued that because God was a God of justice and of mercy, therefore everything would be all right. I may have a right conception of God, and that may be the very reason why I do not do my duty. But wherever there is vision, there is also a life of rectitude because the vision imparts moral incentive.
Ideals may lull to ruin. Take stock of yourself spiritually and see whether you have ideals only or if you have vision.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,Or what's a heaven for?"
"Where there is no vision. . . ."

When once we lose sight of God, we begin to be reckless, we cast off certain restraints, we cast off praying, we cast off the vision of God in little things, and begin to act on our own initiative. If we are eating what we have out of our own hand, doing things on our own initiative without expecting God to come in, we are on the downward path, we have lost the vision. Is our attitude to-day an attitude that springs from our vision of God? Are we expecting God to do greater things than He has ever done? Is there a freshness and vigour in our spiritual out look?

Today is Wednesday May 9, 2007 and I am no closer to my life's goals as I was yesterday or last year. However, now I have a clearer vision.

Labels: goals, vision

In my church this week, they launched a new series that they like to call "Star Wars". It is a discussion of evolution and creation - I guess a battle over who created the stars. This first week, the discussion was confined to "old Earth" vs. "new Earth".

Of course, the atheists believe it is an old earth that some how miraculously appeared from nothing (with a big bang, etc.) I don't have enough faith in that to give it much press here. That is for another post. For today, I am just thinking in terms of God.

The Old Earth theory dictates that the Book of Genesis can easily be interpreted in a way that allows for each of the "days" of Creation could be something other than 24-hour periods. Some of the terminology in Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) provides for this possibility. Therefore, depending on the amount of time for each day, the Earth could be billions of years old which would satisfy the contemporary scientific age estimates of rocks, fossils and the expanding Universe.

On the other hand, the New Earth theory states that the Bible states it took six days to create the Earth. The new Earthers reason that if God said it, then by golly, it took six days to create (and one day to rest). God understood that we (in this case contemporary Americans) know that a day is a 24-hour period and that was the word He chose to use in this account. Therefore, why should we try to put words in God's mouth in order to pacify the pagan scientists anyway? After establishing that one can conclude that since the creation of man was at the end of the first week, one can figure out the age of the Earth by tracking each generation up to Jesus through out the genealogy that the Bible provides. It even gives the age of death of each ancestor (or most) of Christ. Add all that together and calculate the new era dates and you can figure out that the Earth is only 6000 to 8000 years old.

One attached theory to the OET, is that God created the Earth in six days, but made it appear to be mature and old (millions of years old) just as He did the first man (Adam) by creating him to "appear" to be about 16-18 years old - even though his actual age was one day old. I will let that theory just stand alone as an FYI for this entry.

At any rate, it would appear that the "Old Earth Theory" is the most reasonable of the two original theories presented here. First blushes are often deceiving, though. Since one supporting piece of evidence suggests that the plants and animals took care of multiplying themselves with God's direct action in Genesis 1:12 "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good (KJV)."

However, on further examination, all this happened on Day 3 - according to Genesis. But on Day 4, God created the sun and the moon. The problem is that the plants and grasses couldn't multiply on their own without the sun. So, it would be logical to assume that everything had to be in place before life could spontaneously replenish itself.

In addition, there is evidence that some things that appeared to happen over millions of years actually could have happened in a matter of days if certain dramatic events were present (i.e. a world wide flood, earthquakes, etc.) The Grand Canyon is one example.

I am not going to come to a conclusion here. I think both scenarios are possible. The Bible states that all things are possible with God. I guess the lesson is to not get married to any explanation. There is just too much still to examine and learn.

Labels: apologetics, origins