Battle Plan – Strategy 7 – The Reason for God’s Wrath

(The list of these strategies in chart form can be found here.)

Strategy 7: I realize that participating in and supporting immoral, sexual activities is making me a part of the reason God’s wrath is coming on the world.

 In Ephesians 5:3 we read the following:

But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints;” (Ephesians 5:3, NKJV)

Paul continues listing various sins and then concludes with this:

For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them.” (Ephesians 5:5–7, NKJV)

Paul gives another such list in 1 Corinthians:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10, NKJV)

So God is saying that people who live in the life styles listed here will not inherit the kingdom of Christ and God. Now before you get too self-righteous, be sure to notice that he doesn’t include just the sexually immoral. He also includes those who are characterized by covetousness, idolatry, drunkenness, and thievery and swindlers among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Then he goes on (in Ephesians 5)  to tell us why we shouldn’t involve ourselves with these sorts of behaviors. The reason is because these sins are the reason why God’s wrath will come upon the earth. How can we justifiably participate in activities that are the cause of God’s judgment? It doesn’t make any sense for children of God to live in this way. Add to that the thought that others, maybe even some friends, who live in a similar way, or who get involved in such activities with us — these other people who don’t know Christ will perish for all eternity. What will they think of you who participated with them and encouraged them by your participation, are now enjoying eternal salvation while they are condemned. The whole picture doesn’t make sense.

When we come to Christ there is a basic change in our nature. In this same passage in verse 8, Paul writes:

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8, NKJV)

There is a change. We’ve gone from darkness to light. It makes no sense to have fellowship or common bond with the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph 5:11).

Priority Goal 7: Today, every time I am tempted to look at or participate in anything that God says is wrong, I will remind myself that it is because of these very things that God’s wrath is coming. Do I want to be a part of God’s reason for judging the world?

Battle Plan Series – Intro – part 1

Every day we are confronted with temptations that attempt to distract us from our primary focus of service and obedience to Christ. These temptations often derail our attempts to live a godly life. Every day we are engaged in a battle to defeat these temptations and to stay the course. What I hope to do in this series is to review some of what the Bible teaches as to methods and strategies we can use to fight successfully. I plan to provide you with 10 or 11 specific statements that you should be able to make about yourself and about your spiritual life. These will be supported with passages of Scripture to help give you a strong foundation for those statements. If these statements are true of you, you will be in a better position for success in this battle against sin, lust, and temptation. If the statements are not true of you, it should provide motivation and a goal that you can work on in order to improve areas of weakness.

You can download the Battle Plan Chart here.

The first thing we need to realize is that this battle is universal among Christians. As you read this material you are going to be tempted to think that this is a battle for someone else. Often, when we speak of lusts, as we will in the following section, people immediately focus on sexual lust, and if that doesn’t happen to be your problem, you might stop reading thinking that you have everything under control. That is a dangerous position to be in because if you are not aware of a battle for your heart and soul, the devil has you right where he wants you. But as soon as you realize that this applies to you just as much as anyone else, and as soon as you take up arms to defeat your own lusts, you will find a battle greater than you ever imagined could exist.

The first step, then, is to ask ourselves the question: “Do I really want to pursue righteousness and holiness, and count everything loss in order to know Christ and the power of His resurrection in my life?”  In order to accurately answer this question, there are some truths we need to consider.

In 1 John 2:15-17 we read: Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

There is a distinction between the things of the world and the things of God. These verses very clearly teach that it is not possible to love the world and love God at the same time. This means a decision is required. Do I really want to abandon the world for Christ?  This is an overarching decision, but it is also a decision that has to be made hundreds of times a day. Making the decision during a momentary temptation without having made it as a principle of your life will make the battle ultimately impossible to win. So, before you go any further you need to decide – Christ or the world.

In this passage, the Bible focuses on lust.  Lust is a strong desire that is excessive to the point of being sinful. In this passage we have three components given for worldliness – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. We don’t have time to go into each one in detail, but if you think about it you will realize that many of the things we do and decisions we make are made based on these lusts. We covet what we see other people have. We lust for sex or excitement or other flesh-based pleasures. We desire to have people look up to us as someone important or powerful or contented.  All of these temptations come from the world and not from God.

In James 1:14-15 we read this:  But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

Here’s the issue then. The world and Satan provide attractions that feed the lusts that John referred to.  But our temptations come from within us, from our own lusts or desires and we are drawn away by them. Everybody has their own set of personalized lusts. Because of them, we are pulled in a wrong direction. The desires come from deep within us. They are part of our sin nature, our fallenness, our brokenness. As these desires are conceived and gestate within us they give birth to sin. Sin is a thought or deed that is not within the will and character of God. These sins begin to grow and then, as James writes, they bring forth death. The Bible teaches that sin has wages and those wages are death.

A Christian, having been born again and now a child of God, has a new desire in competition with the old tendency, and therein lies the conflict. Paul writes it this way in Galatians 5:17 – For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

So this leads us back now to the first point in what I’m calling Battle Strategies for the war on lust and sin. The first step is to ask ourselves, “Do I really want to pursue righteousness and holiness, and count everything loss in order to know Christ and the power of His resurrection in my life?” Do I really want this? Am I willing to work hard, suffer and sweat to gain it?

We’ll follow up with part 2 next time.

Technology and Interpersonal Relationships

Technology and Relationships

            I think all of us have seen the bizarre sight of a man and woman across from each other in a restaurant each texting or talking to someone else. I saw something similar to this on a beautiful evening while walking down the sidewalk. Toward me came a man and woman walking side by side. Both of them had a phone up to their ear talking to someone elsewhere. It seemed to me that in so doing they were missing both the potential communication with the other person as well as all of the interesting sights and sounds of their actual location.

            Why do we do this to ourselves? What is it about remote contacts that is more appealing than those we are with?  There is a danger here that I don’t think many people think about. If the person you are with is someone near and dear to you such as a wife or a child, and if you repeatedly move yourself from attending to them to attending to someone else (or something else), the relationship changes and is ultimately harmed in some way. It may not be damaged over night, but in time the relationship will not be as strong as it should be.

            We are already familiar with the jokes about the husband who is distracted by a newspaper or a ball game when his wife is trying to talk to him. Think about how much greater the barrier is when there is an actual person on the other end of a conversation who is getting precedence over one’s own spouse. This kind of thing will certainly happen from time to time, but let’s just imagine the scenario that every evening one spouse is texting some invisible person to the neglect of the person right there in front of him. Doesn’t that have the potential to break down the communication and put distance between the two of them? What if they both are doing it? They are each receiving some sort of fulfilling input from a source other than their spouse. Over time, this has to have a damaging effect on the relationship.

            Read what one anonymous reader posted on my blog in response to a technology article:

I read through what you wrote……my comment combines a few, as I am having jealousy issues with my husband’s cell, FB usage, iPad etc. Mostly it is the cell phone usage with access to FB. We have only been married a short time *less than a year* and this is a big issue for me- as it takes away from our time together whether at home, at restaurants, the mall, even at times, at church. Lately I have been praying for patience and understanding…. understanding as to why he chooses it over me. We also, btw, have 4 kids with us at any given time. I am going to read through some of the other postings for enlightenment. But, my stance is: these pieces (cell, iPad, FB) can hurt a person or a relationship just by sucking up the TIME it takes away from a loved one.

            Let’s consider another scenario. A family of five is home for the evening for a change. Dad and mom decide to watch a movie. The children don’t want to watch that particular movie, so the first child goes to his room to watch something he’s interested in on his computer. The next child props his feet up in the family room and listens to his favorite playlist on his phone. And the last child texts back and forth with one of her friends from school. In some homes this is normal. It happens every day.  Do you see a problem here? The family is together, but not communicating.

            Next consider the fact that self-centeredness is fed by this scenario. No one has to learn to appreciate the other person’s taste in music or movies. No one has to learn to share. Everyone can have what suits himself. Sister is not required to talk to brother if she doesn’t want to. While this might seem like a reasonable thing in today’s world, for the Christian it is not the direction we want to go.

            I’ve discovered that living the Christian life is an extremely difficult thing especially when it comes to our relationships with others, especially when those others are members of our family. If we are to become the kind of people God wants us to be, don’t we have to learn the skills that He values?

Let’s look at some relevant scripture passages:

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. (Emphasis mine.)

Philippians 2:3 In lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.

Romans 12:10 In honor giving preference to one another

Galatians 5:13 Through love serve one another.

Deuteronomy 6:7 You shall teach them (God’s words) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie  down, and when you rise up.

Romans 15:1-2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.

            After reading passages such as these, I learn that my role as husband and father is one that is supposed to be other focused. I am to be attentive to the needs of my wife, not only giving preference to her, but making sure that she is built up spiritually and emotionally. I am to esteem her as better than myself when it comes to preferences in the use of time, money and activities. I am not to be focused on pleasing myself but on her good so she can be built up in her faith and character.

            In addition, I am to spend time at all times of the day instilling in my children the words and commandments of God. My focus personally and for my family is one that is to have a God-ward direction. I’m to make sure that I am teaching my children to be focused on the needs and interests of others rather than the natural tendency to focus on self.

            However, when I make arrangements for each of my children to have his/her own electronic entertainment, I am teaching them that they don’t have to learn to cater to the desires and preferences of others. I am teaching them that each of us can have what we want. Some may argue that such arrangements are not taking away from the preferences of others because they too get to listen to or watch what they want. But the issue is in learning to communicate and to submit to one another. It’s difficult to let another person have the choice of the music that I have to listen to or the movie we’re going to watch. Why should I have to watch a movie my sister picked out?! My selfish self rebels against this. If we all have to watch the same movie or listen to the same music and share the same space, we learn to put others first and to share. This doesn’t come naturally, but it is what God wants from us. And as parents we need to make our daily instruction an integral part of our dialogue throughout the day’s activities. Our decisions about how we use technology impact that daily instruction. If everyone including parents is distracted with their own movie, playlist, Facebook page, and text messages, where are the opportunities going to come from for sharing the Christian life with one another?

            It takes time to build and nurture relationships. It takes time for me to nurture the relationship with my wife and children, and it takes a lot of practice for children to learn to relate with each other in the way I’m describing. The fact that our technology has become ubiquitous and personal has worked against us in the area of personal relationships. In fact, just this week as I was working on this, (January 2012), CNN had an article on how multitasking hinders young people’s social skills. http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/25/tech/social-media/multitasking-kids/index.html)

            We need to take steps to reverse the trend and nurture the personal relationships in our lives the way God intended. As parents we need to make sure we are fulfilling God’s desire for us to train up our children in the way they should go. As spouses, we need to fulfill God’s design for marriage by being all there for our spouse throughout the moments of every day.

            As I was thinking through the thoughts I shared last time, I was thinking through the difference between the way we interact with technology and the way we used to interact with newspapers or books. We’ve all seen the older sitcoms where a woman would be trying to speak to her husband, but he would be hiding behind a newspaper. He was shutting her out of his world during the time he was reading the paper.

            My dad was a pastor. He loved to read, and so he almost always had a book with him. When we’d go on vacation, as soon as he had a chance, he would sit down somewhere in the shade and read his book. This would sometimes perturb my mother because she often had other ideas of what she would rather have him do with his time, especially time she considered to be family time.

            In both of these scenarios, it’s important for a husband to learn to be attentive to the needs and desires of his wife and family. It was still possible to be withdrawn and separated from those around us even when the technology consisted of paper and ink.

            But I’ve been asking myself the question as to whether our issue today is just another version of the same thing, or is it fundamentally different? On the surface there are some of the same issues. I can be reading the daily news on my phone when my wife wants to get my attention about something. A phone isn’t as big as a newspaper, and so she can easily see my face.  Or, I can be on vacation, and when I think I have a good opportunity, I can go off somewhere and read a book on a Kindle. Is this different or the same as what happened in previous generations?

            On another level, the two media pose completely different circumstances that I think we as Christians need to look at very carefully. With print media, one is normally locked into one task. When I’m reading a book, everyone around me knows I’m reading a book. If I decide I’d like to check on the yesterday’s sports scores, I will put down the book and go pick up the newspaper. If my son is reading the sports page, I have to wait until he’s finished. I don’t know how other people are, but very seldom, if I had five minutes of free time between getting dressed and leaving for work, would I go find my book, pick it up, and read a page. Because I wasn’t used to so much distraction and multi-tasking, my brain didn’t think it needed to find some little thing to do during every quiet space in the day.

            How do things differ now with technology? Let me use myself as an example. I have a phone that I use for just about everything except typing. I mean I can study my Bible, check the weather, read the news, read any number of different books, play games, text people, send out tweets, check on Facebook, etc. Because I am older, I tend to use this tool more like I would the device it replaces. In other words, when I read, I tend to read it the way I would a book. Younger people tend to be much more distracted and multi-tasking than I am. But having said that, I have noticed some tendencies that automatically come with this type of technology.

            I may be reading my Bible and meditating on it, but then wonder what today’s weather is going to be. So almost in mid-sentence I may switch over and check the weather. Then I’ll wonder what the 10-day outlook is and so might check that out. Needless to say, this breaks my train of thought. I may be reading another book, when I wonder if anyone has posted a response to a grandchild’s picture I posted on Facebook, and so might switch over there to see what’s been happening. Someone there may have referenced a cute YouTube video, and so I might check that out and chuckle as I see the inane antics of some 2-year-old. Meanwhile, the thoughts evoked by the book I was reading are long gone.

            All of the previous events can take place while I’m “reading” a text. But what about all of the other snippets of time that are spread throughout the day?  We have a tendency to check in with the technology in almost every spare minute. There is a pull there that was not present in the newspaper and book. I’m not saying there is anything innately wrong about that, but it has a pull. Can’t you feel it? You have a few minutes while your wife is putting dishes in the dishwasher, and so you check out the sports scores. She comes in the living room to find you looking at your phone. It was just a few seconds, and you found out what you wanted to know, and so you put it down. Later on, there’s a lull in the conversation, if you ever got started in a conversation in the first place, and so you check to see if anyone has updated Facebook. In a few more minutes you remember that you had put a bid on Ebay, and so you check your email for a minute to see if there’s a message there regarding your bid. Again, you set your phone aside, only to hear the familiar tone that tells you someone has texted you. It would be rude to leave it until tomorrow, so you quickly check to see what that was about. Oh, it was only Culver’s restaurant telling you you could get a buy-one-get-one free Sundae on Thursday between 4 and 5 pm. That was important, wasn’t it? Through all of this you are pulled aside from conversing with your wife or distracted from what your children are doing. Rather than talking to or playing with them, you are fiddling with your phone.

            Another difference I’ve discovered about technology media compared to print media is that it tends to hold our attention more. Often that’s because a video is somehow involved, or because the communication is fluid. That is, it’s changing. There are new postings and responses all of the time. It used to be when a person was reading a book, and another person in the room wanted to say something, it wasn’t too difficult to pull the attention away from the book to listen to the other person. When that happened to me, I would usually put a finger down where I had left off and then listen to what was being said and reply back and forth if that was called for. Now, when someone interrupts a person using a computer or phone or other device, it’s hard for the person to break away. There’s a tendency to keep looking back at the device that has grabbed our attention. This leaves the other person feeling like they are not as important as whatever it is that’s showing on the screen.

            One other related issue is that it used to be that when family gathered in the living room after a meal or whatever, they would easily carry on conversations. Even if someone was browsing a magazine or knitting or something like that, the conversation could continue. When there were normal lulls in the conversation, someone would bring up another topic, and the conversation would continue. What’s happening now is that we feel the tug to keep doing something “profitable” during those lulls, and so we pull out the phone or computer so that we can keep tabs on something else, other than what’s going on in the room. The problem is that it is not as easy to return to the conversation again, and people don’t know whether to interrupt or not. Some people even plan ahead so that they have their device ready for those lulls. When they do this, it looks to others like they are prepared for the conversation to be uninteresting and unimportant. It sends exactly the opposite signal from the one we should be sending.

            God is interested in interpersonal relationships. The members of the trinity have loved each other since eternity past and have been carrying on a loving communicating relationship forever. When God created us, he created us in his image. One of the things that means is that he created us as communicating beings. He gave us faces so that we could see one another as we communicated. We could read each other’s facial expressions, point of focus, eye movements, and so on. Proverbs 15:30 says the light of the eyes rejoices the heart.

            In his book The Next Story, Tim Challies explains that before the fall, God and man had direct communication. (page 93) He calls this immediate communication. The prefix im means not, as in immature, meaning not mature.  So immediate communication is communication that is not mediated. In other words, it is face to face with no intervening medium. Challies contends that this is God’s preference and ideal. He writes, “I would argue that it [mediated communication] is, in fact, a lower form of communication, one that is intended to be a mere supplement to our lives. The best relationships we can have are not those that rely on mediation, but rather the ones that allow for unmediated contact and communication.” By unmediated contact he means face to face communication. I agree with this assessment. We thank God for means of communication that allow us to be in contact with family and friends that are far away. Sending a letter or email or text message allows us to communicate with those with whom we cannot have immediate communication.

            When we were first created, God had face-to-face communication with us. After the fall, God basically turned aside in a way, and Adam, for his part, hid so God couldn’t see him. Ultimately God sent Jesus Christ to be the mediator between God and man so that fellowship and communion could exist. God wants immediate communication with us, and he desires that we have immediate communication with one another.

            But what’s happening now is that we turn our backs on the immediate communication we could be having with family or friends who are right with us and communicating in a mediated way with others. We are neglecting what is arguably the ideal method of communication and substituting an inferior type of communication on purpose. Besides switching to an inferior mode of communication, it is often communication with someone who is further removed from us relationally than those right around us.

            In her book Distracted, Maggie Jackson writes, “Moreover, a boundary-less world means that coming home doesn’t signal the end of the workday anymore than being on vacation is a time of pure relaxation, or being under one roof marks the beginning of unadulterated family time. We rarely are completely present in one moment or for one another….To cope and to keep up with our pulsing personal orbits, we live in worlds of our own making, grazing from separate menus, plugged into our own bedroom-based media centers, adhering to customized schedules. … Seventeen percent of the families in the UCLA study consistently ate dinner together. On weekdays, the parents and at least one child came together in a room just 16 percent of their time at home. True, hours together don’t automatically translate into intimacy. But if we can’t be bothered to keep coming together in the fullest, richest sense of the word, we lose the opportunity to form those deeper bonds. … Are we losing our willingness to wade down into the painful, soulful depths of human relations? ‘When you can have a face-to-face conversation, do you? When you’re right in very close proximity, do you bother?’ asked Ochs. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to wake up and think, “Oh my gosh, we could have been having a conversation.”’”

            My hope is that as Christians, we will not be absorbed into the world’s way of thinking about these things. Relationships are important to God. Satan would do all that he can to disrupt and destroy relationships because good relationships are an image of God and he hates that image to be portrayed with all of the love and self-sacrifice that is an accurate portrayal of God.

            Our technologies, as helpful as they are, have the capacity to disrupt and break down the most crucial and intimate relationships of the home and family. We must not be naive about this. We must be on the alert and take active steps to counter the communication breaking aspects of our technology. It makes no sense to use less than ideal communication media to communicate with people who are further removed from us, when the people we should be caring for are right there, and the means to communicate face-to-face is immediately available.

            So what are some steps we could take to counterbalance the tendencies we’ve discussed? Two choices are not really possible. The first is to throw our hands in the air and say we can’t fight it. It’s too hard, and we can’t make any progress. The other choice is to say that the good old days were better. Let’s get rid of all the technology and return to a previous life. That is not going to happen. So, what can we do?

  1. Realize and accept the fact that you do have the power to control the technology and to manage it for the glory of God.
  2. On the personal level, make the conscious decision that “wherever you are, be all there.” (Jim Elliott)
  3. Based on the previous decision, refuse to take cell calls, look at text messages or emails during times that call for your participation listening and interacting with others. That would mean during mealtimes either at home or in restaurants when you’re with others.
  4. Be careful even during group events such as watching a movie or ball game together. I have discussed the implications of multi-tasking on the brain as well as the importance of being involved socially with others, and so if you are involved in a shared experience, participate in that experience without being distracted by your technology.
  5. If you’re in the kind of setting where reading a physical magazine, book or newspaper would be appropriate, you should be able to read any of these on an electronic device as well. But beware of the tendency to jump from thing to thing. Control your self. Do not allow yourself to be controlled by the technology. Stay tuned to those around you so that you can be involved. If there are conversations going on around you, pay attention to one of them and join in. You don’t want to hear, “… isn’t that right, Roger,” and not know what they are talking about. It is not only embarrassing; it’s rude.
  6. Whether you’re with others or not, control the urge to flit around the internet, hitting links in an almost mindless way. Your brain will become less able to focus. If you find yourself doing this, find something constructive to do either with or without technology, but find something you can focus on for a long stretch.
  7. If you are a parent, this and the following suggestions are for you. Restrict cell phone use. Children do not need to be in communication with their friends at all hours. Perhaps they have a cell phone for safety reasons while away from home, but all phones go on the recharging table when they are home.
  8. There’s no good reason for children and teens to have smart phones. The Internet is not a safe place. As a young man told me just yesterday, “There is no good reason for a 15-year-old boy to have unlimited and unrestricted access to what’s on the Internet.”
  9. Children and teens shouldn’t have TV or computers in their bedrooms. Everything done on a computer should be out in the open in public.
  10. If you allow your children to use Facebook or other social media, you must be their friend online and read through what gets posted both to and from them. Be disciplined about this. It is part of your job. When they have new friend requests, ask them, “Who is that?”
  11. Teach your children electronic etiquette – No phones during meals; don’t interrupt a conversation with a friend to take a call or check a text message; etc.

References:

Bauerlein, Mark. The Dumbest Generation. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.

Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Challies, Tim. The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.

Jackson, Maggie. Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008.

Also you might enjoy listening to http://www.albertmohler.com/2008/07/25/is-technology-distracting-us-to-death/

or this…

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/23/tech.popcorn.brain.ep/?hpt=hp_c1

Technology and Idolatry

            One of the important things for us as Christians to recognize regarding technology is that it can become an idol, either in itself or in the perceived benefits it provides.

            Tim Challies observes, “There are always spiritual realities linked to our use of technology. We know that there is often a link between our use of technology and idolatry, that our idols are often good things that want to become ultimate things in our lives. Communication with others is just this sort of good thing, a very good thing, that can so easily become an ultimate thing—an idol in our hearts. How can we tell if something has become an idol? One possible sign of idolatry is when we devote an inordinate amount of time and attention to something, when we feel less than complete without it. It may be something that we look at right before we go to sleep, and the first thing we give our attention to when we wake up. It may be the kind of thing that keeps us awake, even in the middle of the night.” (The Next Story, page 74)

            Challies gives us several indications as to when a thing might be becoming an idol. One of the things he mentions is the devotion of an inordinate amount of time to something or anything we feel incomplete without. Haven’t you felt these inclinations in yourself when it comes to your smart phone or computer? Haven’t you felt the sensation that says, “What do I do now?” when your phone or computer is out of order? Do you feel compelled to check your Facebook page before you do almost anything else in the morning? Almost certainly most of us check email or Facebook before we even check in with God in prayer or read His Word. That indicates the possibility of an idolatrous situation taking place.

            One author suggests that people have begun to see technology and the Internet as a sort of spiritual existence: “Many see in cyberspace nothing less than a new, spiritual heaven that is open to all who are computer literate, that is, ‘baptized,’ some observe. Cyberspace gives us the means to realize ‘a dream thousands of years old: the dream of transcending the physical world, fully alive, at will, to dwell in some Beyond—to be empowered or enlightened there, alone or with others, and to return,’ writes editor Michael Benedikt in the influential essay collection Cyberspace: First Steps.” (Distracted, page 51)

            People have always had the tendency to be attracted by the idea of out-of-body experiences and existence. The Internet gives them that capability to a degree. They don’t have to be real; they can become strong online when they are weak in person. They can be beautiful online when they may be plain in person. Such capabilities are alluring to some people and take on an idolatrous tug.

            Challies says that we need to figure out what idol we may be serving. “What is really happening here? Why do we feel this constant need to communicate with others? What idol are we serving? There are any number of idols we may be serving through the tools of communication technology:

 • We may be serving the idol of productivity, communicating so that we feel as though we are being productive, constantly answering work-related e-mails or monitoring work-related social media platforms, feeling the need to respond instantly and decisively morning, noon, or night.

 • We may be serving the idol of significance, finding a sense of value in the number of people who notice us and interact with us. People with an idol of significance will measure their success or popularity by the number of friends they have on Facebook or the number of followers on Twitter. They make popularity something that can be measured and analyzed and feel that their own significance increases as more people pay attention to them and interact with them online.

 • It may be that the very desire for information is an idol for us; that we feel as if having more information holds the key to living a better life.” (The Next Story, page 75)

            One type of sin that I think is related to the idol of significance that Challies mentions is the twin sins of pride and envy. Now that we have the ability to inform all of our friends about every move we make, there is a tendency to mention things that we secretly hope will arouse a certain amount of jealousy. Let’s let people know about our latte at Starbucks or the powerful engine in our new truck. Why not inform people that you are having a fantastic time in Bermuda during the middle of a cold winter. I need to be careful here because it is possible to inform friends of these things without having any intention of arousing their jealousy, but it seems to me there is a danger here that we need to be alert to.  Even in the case when our own motive might be pure, we need to learn to have caution as to how we might be provoking others through our carelessness. As Christians we are not supposed to be causing others to stumble, and when we blatantly announce every new purchase or exciting adventure, we may be triggering jealousy in others.

            The Bible tells us to flee idolatry. The natural tendency when one reads an article such as this one, is to go immediately into self-defense mode and to deny that anything close to idolatry exists in our lives. A more prudent reaction would be to go to God humbly and ask Him to reveal to us any areas of our life where He is not first. Ask Him for wisdom to determine whether something about technology – having it, jealousy of others, pride and boasting in social media, or anything else has become an idol.

            The Bible tells us in 1 John 2:15 that we should not love the world. A love of the world is an indication that the love of the Father is not in us. John then goes on to tell us what things demonstrate this love of the world. 1 John 2:16 “For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world.”

            I’m sure if we look carefully and think deeply, we can see that there is potential for each of these three characteristics of worldly focus to be present in our use of technology. As Christians, let’s take steps to recognize God in His proper place and put our technology in its proper place – a place of helpfulness and productivity, but not the place of control and mastery. As Paul said, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” 1 Corinthians 6:12 (Emphasis mine)

Here are some steps that might help us determine whether some technology (or anything) is becoming an idol in our lives.

  1. Evaluate the amount of time you spend with technology, playing games, mindlessly hopping around the Internet, checking Facebook posts, etc., compared to the amount of time you spend in the scriptures, praying, meditating, etc.
  2. Examine the attraction of the technology compared to the attraction of other things. When you first get up in the morning, is your first instinct to check Facebook or email, or do you get showered, dressed, and have devotions before checking in with your technology?
  3. Ask yourself how you would feel if you had a technology-free week with the only exception being voice phone calls. Is the feeling similar to the feeling you would have if you missed your Bible reading, prayer, and church attendance for a week?

When you follow the trail of your time, energy, affection, and money, you find a throne.  And whatever or whomever is on that throne is the object of your worship. ~Louie Giglio

Thoughts from Ephesians – 6

Ephesians 2:11-18

 

Paul called on the Ephesians to remember that there was a time when they were outside of the covenant people of God. During the Old Testament period, God worked with the nation of Israel. He wanted His praise and testimony to be known in all the world through Israel, but the covenants were given to this particular people. Paul says in Eph 2:12 “You were aliens from Israel and strangers to the covenants and without hope and without God.” (my paraphrase) That was not a minor technicality! Being without hope and without God were serious problems making it impossible to know God or have eternal life.

Paul goes on to say that now, in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. The wall of separation between Jew and non-Jew has been broken down. The enmity which is the law of commandments in the ordinances has been abolished. The commandments and ordinances were the documents that defined Israel and separated them from the rest of the world. Christ has abolished that separation and is creating in himself one new man from the two.

God’s purpose is that both Jews and Gentiles will be reconciled to God as part of one body, not two. Both have access by one Spirit (not two) to the Father.

It is interesting to me that this reconciling work (both to God and to each other) was accomplished on the cross. I think an interesting study some time would be to study through all that was accomplished by Christ on the cross.

Since most of us reading and sharing about these things are Gentiles, it should cause great rejoicing to think that God has made it possible for us to be part of His people too. We are not strangers and aliens any longer!

Ephesians Study – 2

Ephesians 1:7-10

Several things come to my mind as I read these 4 verses. I think of the key word “redemption” mentioned in verse 7. Here we have visualized the process whereby a slave is bought back. Someone has been sold as a slave and a kind person pays the price to buy him out of slavery and sets him free. I see that as a picture of how Christ has bought us back and set us free from guilt and sin. In fact that is what the next part of the verse talks about – the forgiveness of sins. There are some people who have no concept of how sinful they really are and therefore may not fully appreciate what forgiveness is. To be completely set free from the guilt and penalty of sin is an amazing thing. As we grow older and study the Word more, we realize how depraved we actually are and as a result we realize all the more the wonder of forgiveness. All of this of course comes from His grace. It is all undeserved by us. Sometimes I think we come to believe that God owes us something. But the Bible teaches us that it’s all because of His amazing grace.

Paul seems to delight in superlatives because he doesn’t just stop with the word grace at the end of verse 7. He tells us that this grace abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. His grace doesn’t come in a trickle. It is abundant and it doesn’t come out of God’s ignorance but through his great wisdom and insight. It’s a result of His character.
Probably the next two verses take a deeper study, but what I see here is an expression of ultimate purpose. It flows down through verse 12. But in this section I see that when time is complete and all of the ages roll together toward their ultimate conclusion, God is and will gather together all things in Christ and make Him the ultimate focus of everything there is. This not only includes the things in heaven but also the things on the earth. I imagine that this is why he tells us elsewhere that every knee will bow. Thinking about this certainly makes a lot of other things pale in comparison and much we focus on in life seems rather insignificant, doesn’t it.

Some Thoughts from Ephesians – 1

Ephesians 1:1-6

1Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.

There are many things to think about just in these 6 short verses. My goal is to choose a few topics which speak to my heart and may also speak to yours. In the process, I’ll pose a couple of questions also which might be able to stimulate some discussion and thought.

Much could be made out of the fact that Paul addresses these people as saints even though they were undoubtedly normal, failure-prone people. When God declares us righteous, we are righteous. The really amazing thing to me though is that in verse three, Paul tells us that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. God is not stingy. I don’t know how many spiritual blessings there are, but it seems like there must be close to an infinite number. God has blessed us with every one. And then I think about the fact that it is not others who have been blessed in this way, it is “us”. I’m included in that.

Then, unlike us, Paul is not afraid to tackle a big issue without batting an eye. He tells us that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. I have thought about these things a lot and am convinced that even though we don’t understand how this all fits together with our responsibility for what we do, God is the one who chose us for himself long before we were born. What an amazing thing!

Some Questions:
What are some of the “benefits” we receive because of our adoption as sons?
What are some of the spiritual blessings we have been blessed with?
What can we do to become outwardly more of what we are positionally, that is holy and blameless?

Part 3 – Speaking About Christ, God Has…

Made Him heir of all things. “[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;” (Hebrews 1:2, NKJV)

God has made Jesus Christ the inheritor of all things. Take a moment and consider what is included in the “all things.” All nature?  Yes. Every planet? Yes. Every galaxy? Yes. Every person? Yes.

In Ephesians 1:18 Paul prays that as believers our eyes would be opened to “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18, NKJV) This is not Christ as our inheritance. This is Christians as His inheritance. Christians are part of the all things that Jesus has inherited from God the Father. And as long as we are stretching our faith, let’s consider the fact that God has announced that His people are joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

Given Him Authority.as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.” (John 17:2, NKJV)

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matthew 28:18, NKJV)

Made Him head of the Church And He is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18, NKJV)

Jesus Christ has been given all authority over everything in the universe, and in a special sense He is head of the Church because the Church is His body. He is present in the Church everywhere the true church is found and He is its head. No pastor, bishop or pope can claim that position.

Made Him the judge. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son,” (John 5:22, NKJV)

and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.” (John 5:27, NKJV)

It’s interesting to note that the Father judges no one. The authority to judge every one of us has been given to the Son. Every one of us will stand before Him one day and be judged. We will be judged by a peer if you will, another human. The Man Christ Jesus. Paul told the Athenians, “but [God] now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”” (Acts 17:30–31, NKJV)

When will this judgment take place? The book of Hebrews tells us: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Hebrews 9:27, AV)

Has sent Him on a mission. The Word, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity was sent on a mission arranged in eternity past. This mission basically was to come to this earth as a human being, live among us, be tempted in every way like we are without sinning, be illegally convicted and executed as punishment for our sins and then to be resurrected to return to His position in glory from where He had come. This time He returns as a conquering King who has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,” (2 Timothy 1:10, NKJV)

He testified that He had come to give life abundantly (John 10:10) and to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Summarizing then what we have covered under this heading, we have learned that God has made Christ the heir of all things, given Him authority over everything which includes His responsibility to judge and God has sent Him on a mission to rescue people from their sins and the penalty that comes from sin.

We can see therefore how central and supreme Jesus Christ is to everything God has done and is doing in the world.

The Hope of God’s Calling

Hope of His Calling

Paul writes in Ephesians: “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18, NKJV)

Why is there hope in his calling? This is what I want us to think about today.

Let’s start with Romans 8:28-30:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” (Romans 8:28–30, NKJV)

First in this passage we learn that God works all things together for good for those who are the called according to His purpose. There is hope in His calling because we are assured that God is at work on our behalf, ensuring that all things are working together for good.

The second thing we notice is there is a sequence here. God foreknew and then predestined His own to be conformed to the image of Christ. It is these foreknown and predestined people that God called. So there is hope in God’s calling because we therefore know that God knew us from eternity past and predestined that we would become like Christ.

The verse goes on to say that those He called He justified and glorified (past tense). So we further learn that there is hope in our calling because those whom God calls have been justified, that is, declared righteous. And not only that, as far as God is concerned, they are already glorified. There is a lot of hope in that!

Romans 11:29 tells us that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. So that is another truth that strengthens our hope, isn’t it? It encourages our hope to know that God’s calling in our lives will never be revoked. He will not take it back. The deal has been sealed.

Paul’s prayer, quoted at the beginning,  is that the eyes or our hearts would be enlightened – that we would be able to “see” this truth so that our calling by God would bring us hope. I don’t think there’s a better thing to meditate on as we begin a new year!

 

 

 

 

Charles and Larry discuss Poverty

These CL Discussions are imagined conversations between a conservative Christian and a liberal person. The conservative’s name is Charles. The liberal’s name is Larry. These are not real conversations. They are imagined and the conservative views are mine, a fact you would have had no trouble discerning yourself. The opinions of the Liberal are typical of people I have met over the years, but don’t reflect any one person’s point of view. I am not claiming that these discussions are unbiased. I’m using them as a means of organizing my own thoughts as well as possibly helping others clarify their own point of view as well.

(Check for further conversations like this on Fridays. Whenever I have a CL discussion, I’ll post it on Friday.)

C: Thanks for meeting me for coffee, Larry. It’s good to get out and have real conversation and discussion. So much of the debate and argument occurring today in politics and other corners of culture are so vitriolic and combative. One of the things I like about our conversations is that we can debate intensely, hold our ground and yet give each other space to think differently.

L: Agreed! You don’t find much of that kind of discussion going on anywhere anymore.

C: What have you been reading or thinking about lately?

L: Not really been reading much. I’ve been thinking a lot about poverty and its causes. Some people are at a real disadvantage in our economic system. The system seems to favor some people and penalize others.

C: What do you mean?

L: Well, some people grow up in homes where they don’t value education or where the parents are on drugs or something and the kids just grow up not wanting to learn or work hard or anything. They don’t develop a lot of skills and so they can’t find work and the cycle just repeats itself.

C: In all your thinking have you been able to come up with any solutions?

L: I don’t know, I just think we have to help people like that a little more

C: Are you?

L: Am I what?

C: Have you found some family like that that you’re helping?

L: No, not personally. I meant as a society our government should help people like that.

C: Where would the government get the money to do that?

L: I guess through taxes.

C: Do you think that would help the skill problem? I mean it might enable them to buy food and  clothes or keep the heat on, but I don’t think it would really get to the root of the problem.

L: There must be something that could be done to stop the cycle. Maybe there’s something our schools could do more. You were a teacher weren’t you. What are the schools doing to help?

C: I’ve thought a lot about this. I used to teach math and science to middle and high school kids. It was a poorer district. There were a lot of kids who received free lunch and so on. A higher percentage of those kids did not want to work in school and they really didn’t want to do their homework.

L: That’s because nobody at home modeled that for them. How would you expect them to do any homework when maybe their folks were high or maybe it was just a single mom at home who tried her best, but didn’t know how to make sure her kids had time to do their school work. Maybe she didn’t even realize how important it was.

C: So if one of those scenarios was the case, what should the school do about it?

L: Maybe keep the kids who needed help after school so that the teacher could work with them more.

C: You could do that, but then you’d have to hire more staff, but it could be done. What usually happened though is that the parents didn’t want to have to come to school to pick them up or perhaps they didn’t have a working car or something like that and so they relied on the school bus to take their children home.

L: They could do that, couldn’t they?

C: Sure. The buses sometimes took athletes home later. What I found though is that in most cases the kids really didn’t want to spend more time in school. They already didn’t like school. Their parents weren’t always willing to fight that battle against their kids. It worked for some kids certainly, but not for the majority. There was something about the climate in those homes that made it very difficult to overcome.

C: Realistically, it seems to me that what has to happen is for someone — now this is going to sound extreme, and it can never really happen – someone needs to basically move in to the home and assist the family to know how to set priorities, budget their time and money, educate them on the importance of learning a skill and teaching them that it takes persistence and daily effort and self-discipline to change into patterns that would be productive for them and their children.

L: Wow, that really is extreme!

C: Or you could have something like a working farm where the kids could go and learn how to get up early and do chores and live a disciplined and organized life with time for chores, school work and fun too of course. I’m not talking about a military camp or a slave farm. I’m talking about a place where kids could learn to be self-reliant and productive and realize the pleasure that comes from being successful at something. So many kids never have that opportunity.

L: But since your ideas are really extreme and are not really going to happen for the majority of kids coming from dysfunctional situations, isn’t the next best thing to provide the family with some assistance financially to get them out of poverty?

C: It doesn’t work. If you gave a family $50,000 a year and the family had no experience in budgeting, bargain hunting, saving for the future, prioritizing purchases, etc., that money would be basically wasted. Don’t you think?

L: Probably. But could we have required instructional classes that go along with it that they have to attend. Maybe somebody could go shopping with them to show them how to do it.

C: Where are you going to get that kind of staff?

C: And what happens when they don’t meet the requirements, miss meetings or whatever? Cut off their support? Then you’re right back where you started.

L: What does your Christian faith teach about all of this. Aren’t we supposed to have compassion on the poor?

C: Yes, of course. It’s too big a topic to go into in detail, but the Bible teaches a lot of things. Helping the poor is to be an individual or church matter, not a government function. Individual people and churches are to help the people in their communities, people that they have contact with and can follow-up with easier. The Bible teaches that one’s property belongs to the individual. If it is to be shared communally, it is done so voluntarily, not by voting to take more taxes from everybody in the community.

C: One of the things the Bible teaches is that poverty is often a result of individual decisions that arise from thinking or acting foolishly, without regard to wisdom. The Bible also teaches consequences. It says for example that someone who will not work should not eat. It’s not talking about people who are unable to work because of physical difficulties, but if someone is just sitting around all day and is unwilling to work, then they shouldn’t eat. I think we make it too easy for people to do that today. We give them support so that they don’t have to work but still get to eat. And besides that, most poor people in this country have television, a phone, a microwave, air conditioning, etc. That’s not what the word poor used to mean.

L: Now you’re starting to sound kind of mean and unsympathetic to their plight.

C: Not at all. We’ve removed the motivation to work.

L: But sometimes there isn’t a job for everyone.

C: I see help wanted signs all of the time in my county where there is still a lot of unemployment.

L: Maybe people don’t have the skill.

C: To work at Subway?! The thing is you have to follow a schedule, get to work on time, show up every day, and work. There are a lot of people who don’t want to do that.

L: I think most people want to be productive.

C: Then why don’t they take those jobs?

L: I don’t know.

C: Another thing that has happened is that because of all the lawsuits, people can’t really help out around their own government-assisted housing. What if people who lived in a low-rent situation had to help out by washing windows, keeping a garden, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, etc. But you can’t require them to do that or even allow them to volunteer to do some of that because what if they fall from a ladder while washing windows? Then you have a lawsuit on your hands. So then people who are on government assistance have nothing to do with their time. There is no productive work and so they sit around a lot. Sometimes people like this don’t realize what they’re missing and they get depressed because they don’t understand that what’s missing from their life is meaningful, productive activity.

C: We’ve completely lost God’s plan for work and the reward that comes from working hard and seeing the fruit of your labor. I don’t know how to get it back.

L: Wow! The time has flown by. Speaking of work, I had better get there. See you later, Charles.

C: See ya!