11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s prayers for the people of God should help us know how we should pray for others. Prayer is a difficult thing, and if you are anything like me, you tend to pray the same things over and over for the people in your life.
Let’s take a look at this prayer from 2 Thessalonians 1.
First, we notice that there is a purpose to his praying: “To this end we pray.” What is this end or purpose? He explains it after the word “that.” So I conclude that it is important to have a purpose in our praying. It should not merely be out of duty or habit, although both motivations are good. But there should be consciousness of who we are talking to, and the reason we are making the request.
Paul’s first purpose is that “God may make you worthy of his calling.” Sometimes we think that we need to be worthy in order for god to call us. But the reverse is true. No one is worthy to be called by God. God calls us, we receive that calling by faith in Him, and then He begins to make us worthy of that calling. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul urges us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling that we’ve been given. We live under the umbrella of the grace of God. There is no condemnation for the Christian (Romans 8:1), and therefore we have space and freedom to grow in our way of living so that we become more worthy of the calling that we already have.
The second aim Paul has is that God “may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.” We all know that our aspirations for living a godly life out pace our ability and resolve to actually live that life. Paul is praying that God would fulfill those resolves. It is God who strengthens the resolve and fulfills those desires for good that we have. And it is also His power that results in the outcomes that we may see coming from our faith.
And what is the actual purpose of these goals? That the Lord Jesus may be glorified in us and ultimately we will be glorified in Him when, at the end of time, all in the universe will be able to see the results of the multifaceted grace of God.
What if we could all pray like this for ourselves, our family members, and our brothers and sisters in Christ. What a powerful effect it would produce in our homes, churches, and country.
In our Bible reading the other morning, we came upon this verse in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12: “For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”
I had always read this as the Apostle Paul encouraging the folks in Thessalonica and challenging them to live a God-honoring life. What I had never seen before is the fact that he explains that his encouragement is the kind a father would give to his children. Then, I began to consider the content of that encouragement. Needless to say, it is quite the challenge for us as fathers to encourage and charge our children in the way he describes here. So let’s take a couple of minutes and look at what we should teach our children.
Paul uses three words in verse 12. The ESV translates them exhort, encourage, and charge. Exhort means to ask for earnestly, beg, plead, or urge. The word encourage means to console, comfort and encourage. And finally, charge means to insist, implore, and involves testifying or witnessing to something. When you put all of this together, it means we as fathers should pursue the instruction of our children in such a way that we urge them along and beg them to follow the path we are teaching them. Along the way there will be failures and so there is a comforting and encouraging aspect to our instruction. No failure is final, and we should make sure our children understand that. Finally it involves imploring and insisting based on our own testimony that we are walking this same path and are witnessing to the fact that it is the right path, a path that leads ultimately to our sanctification and eternal life.
He then says that we should teach them to walk in a manner worthy of God. This can mean a couple of things. First, our walk is our manner of life. Therefore, we should encourage and charge our children to have a certain manner of life – a particular way of living. It’s not something to be taught once and then chalked up as a lesson learned. This is going to require time on our part, as Moses writes in Deuteronomy. We should teach and explain the ways of God when we get up, when we are going through our day, and when we are heading to bed at night (Deuteronomy 6).
What does it mean to walk in a manner worthy of God? First, let’s recognize that no one is perfect in this life. But with this understood, the goal is to be an example and to teach them to walk as God would walk. When we talk about living a godly life, we are talking about a life that looks like how God would live it if He were here. And, after all, He was here, wasn’t He? Jesus is God in the flesh and His life is our example. As 1 John 2;6 says, “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.”
As I said earlier, it’s important to be an example in this process. It would do no good to teach your children to live like God would live if you are living an ungodly life. It’s a tough and narrow road, but if we are walking this road as faithfully as we know how, we can encourage our children to walk that same road with us. And we should do this day after day. Think, “How can I teach my children by instruction and example how to walk like Jesus today.” If you don’t do it today, you won’t ever do it.
The God we are teaching our children to follow is the God who calls us into His own Kingdom and glory. Believers are called a kingdom of priests who are to show forth the glory of God, and ultimately, we will be called to rule and reign with Him. You should encourage your children with this truth. If they savingly believe on Christ, they too will be called to participate in the heavenly reign of Christ. What a motivating truth!
Finally, Paul goes on in verse 13 to mention that the Thessalonian believers received the word of God, not as the words of man, but as the word of God. I believe this is an important truth. There are many ways to believe the Bible. But only one way saves, and that is if we believe that the Bible is what it claims to be, the word of God. One of the prayers I have for my grandchildren is that when they read the Bible, they won’t just read it as a historical document, but that they will hear it as God’s word to them. The word is living and powerful and our children need to be taught that, both by example and by direct teaching. Every time you read the Bible to them, tell them, “This is the word of God. Pay close attention.”
This portion of a letter to the Thessalonians that sounds at first like a pastor encouraging his congregation, is more than that. It is a reminder to us dads that this is the way we are to train up our children so that their manner of life will be worthy of God. May God help each of us as we train up our children in the way they should go.
From the back cover of “What in the World is God Doing” – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1,2 ESV. Nature declares the fact that God exists. The message pours froth from every direction. Yet, the God who exists is a God of WORD. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” Hebrews 1:1,2 God has spoken through the Bible and in his Son, Jesus Christ. He has told us about himself, how he made all of creation, and what is overarching purpose for all of it is. The author makes the case that understanding this purpose, and ordering our lives accordingly, will result in a truly meaningful life that will glorify God now and throughout eternity.
In the last article in this series we looked at the concept
of “presuppositions.” Presuppositions are ideas we believe or accept without
proof. Everyone has them. Even in mathematics we have things called postulates
which are statements that are accepted as true without proof. I remember a math
class I had once where we assumed that the number 1 existed. We also assumed
that the next number in a counting series could be found by adding the number 1
to the previous number. Every other “truth” that we used in the course had to
be proved from these two postulates or assumptions or presuppositions.
So what does this have to do with our discussion of truth
and how we know it? Let’s take the Creation vs Evolution debate for example. I
worked in the public schools for 42 years and have seen the nuances that this
debate has taken. When everything is sorted out through the legal system it
usually comes down to this: Creation is a religious, faith-based idea and
therefore has no place within the science curriculum. Evolution however is a
scientific truth and therefore can and should be taught within the science
curriculum.
I realize that I am probably not going to change many minds
in this short article, but this is how I see it in light of our discussion
about truth and how we know it. Scientific knowledge and truth come from
proposing an hypothesis and then designing a controlled experiment to test that
hypothesis to see if it is true. In the case of the origin of life, it seems
obvious to me that there can be no experiment designed that will duplicate the
conditions, time span, and forces needed to create and evolve life by random
processes. Every attempt so far has involved a high level of human thinking and
planning involved to set up conditions favorable for the creation of life. The
true condition of randomness and chance events were not duplicated. Even so, life has not been created by those
experiments.
On the creation side, there is no one alive today who saw
God create anything. All we have is ancient documents within various religious
traditions describing how God did it.
My point is that those who claim evolution is true are
actually proposing something just as faith-based as a creationist is.
But the evolutionist says, “No, that’s not true. You
creationists are bringing God into the mix. We are providing a natural and
scientific explanation of how life began and evolved.” The problem here is with
the assumptions or presuppositions that underlie what we believe. In order to
fit the definition of science, God must be left out of the equation. That is an
assumption. All of the study and investigation that takes place looks for
explanations that leave God out. It is assumed that God either does not exist
or does not play any role in any way in the natural world. But suppose God
actually exists. If God actually exists, isn’t it madness to try to get at the
explanation for why things are the way they are without including him in the
mix?
“But”, they say, “we don’t know if God exists or not and
therefore, we choose to leave him out of our assumptions regarding science and
simply look for the natural causes of things.”
OK. That’s fine. But don’t call your explanation of origins
totally scientific because you are basing your “science” on the belief that
certain things are true. There are a set of beliefs or assumptions upon which
the entire system is built. That makes it a faith based philosophy.
A scientist who includes the belief in a god or supreme
being in his foundational assumptions will also build a faith-based science.
But he, when he looks at the order and apparent “design” in the universe, will
come to the conclusion that there is a designer behind it.
It’s interesting that in normal life we do this all the
time. If you’re walking through the woods and you come upon a group of similar
sized stones lying in the dirt forming the shape of a circle, you assume
someone of intelligence placed them that way. You don’t assume that they just
fell there randomly. And yet when some scientists look at the brain or the eye,
they don’t see a designer at all, but millions of years of random circumstances
producing it. So we attribute a simple circle of stones to an intelligent
designer, i.e., a human being behind it, but something as complex as an eye
evolved with no intelligent activity involved in it at all.
When trying to determine the truth, everyone begins their
investigative reasoning with presuppositions or assumptions. Mathematicians do
it and scientists do it. We all do it. We need to be careful to recognize that
we are doing it. When you make statements of truth or believe what someone else
says, look for the presuppositions that underlie those statements. Second, make
sure that when you are discussing what you believe to be the truth, acknowledge
your presuppositions. Don’t hide them. Finally make sure your presuppositions
are logical and consistent. Only in so doing will you be able to get at the
truth whether it is in the field of science, politics or religion.
As Christians we believe that the Bible is God’s word to man, and a Christian man who is trying to be faithful to his Lord will try to govern his life according to God’s will as given in the Bible.
The purpose
of this series of articles has been to examine the relationship between
technology and the Christian. In this last section I want to look at the issue
of technology and sexual temptation. However, I think that in order to explain
the sexual implications of technology I need to lay the groundwork of a few
principles from the Bible that I’m assuming in this discussion.
The first
thing we need to remember is that God created sex and sexuality. Sex in itself
is not a dirty or vulgar thing. It is a God-given gift. Next, we need to
remember that God has told us in Scripture that sex is to be enjoyed, but that
enjoyment is to be within the relationship of marriage between a man and a
woman. All through the Bible the rightful sexual relationship within marriage
is praised and held up as a joyful thing, not as a vulgar thing.
After Adam
sinned, man’s nature became sinful in all areas of his being and strong
desires, which the Bible calls lusts, began to have a dominant force in a
person’s life. The Bible says that the strong desires of the body (or the flesh
as the Bible describes it), the strong desires coming through our vision, and
the pride of life, are not from God the Father, but are part of the world
system. (I John 2:16) These strong
desires are very difficult to overcome, and without the Spirit of God at work,
it’s almost impossible.
When a
person comes to Christ, God gives him His Spirit and divine power to enable him
to overcome these desires and to live a life that pleases God. We need to
recognize that God has given us commands and directives because He is the one
who created us, and He knows best what is good for our well-being. We should
never look at the commandments of God as though they were meant to spoil our
fun. When we buy a product, a manufacturer will enclose a list of instructions
that show the proper way to use the device. For example, we are perhaps not
supposed to use the device in the water. It may cause damage to the device or
injury to us. These are rules written by the ones who know best how things are
supposed to work. The same is true of God’s rules for us.
The Bible
describes sexual sin with several different terms. One term, porneia, is
used for any sexual sin that is outside of the norm and standard that God
designed. The Greek word I referred to
here you will recognize as the root word for our word pornography. Another
Greek term is translated adultery and usually refers to sexual sin
committed by a married person. Another couple of terms refer to sexual sin as uncleanness
or lewdness. God uses all of these words to describe sins whereby we
violate God’s standard for our sexual behavior.
Let’s look
at some of the descriptions the Bible lays out. Let’s start with what Jesus
actually said. In Mark 7:21 Jesus, speaking about the fact that sin comes from
within a man, says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality (porneia, fornication),…adultery,
…sensuality (lewdness, sexual excess). All these evil things come from
within, and they defile a person.” Notice a couple of things here. First of all,
they come from within. The Bible says that the heart is deceitful and
desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). So the source of our difficulty is not from
the outside, but is from within. James writes that “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.”
Next we see
that Jesus describes these actions as evil. Most of what happens sexually in
our culture is not considered evil by most people. The Bible has a different
approach. It makes a clear-cut statement
that sexual immorality is to be avoided and shunned. Lastly, we notice that they defile a person.
We defile ourselves from what comes from within ourselves. Defilement means we
make ourselves dirty and unfit for service for God
Paul,
writing to the Romans in 13:13 says, “Let us walk properly as in the daytime,
not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality (free and easy sex)
and sensuality.” In the next verse he
tells us to make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” In other words, we should not make it easy to
serve our lusts. Paul writes similar things to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians
12:21.
To the
Ephesians in 5:3 he writes, “But sexual immorality and all impurity or
covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let
there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of
place. Be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who
is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no 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.” In other words, God’s wrath is coming because
people engage in these behaviors. Why would we as Christians want to be a
participant?
Finally,
let’s look at what the Apostle Peter wrote in his first letter. In 4:2 he says
that we should live “no longer for human passions but for the will of God. The
time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in
sensuality (lewdness, sexual excess), passions, drunkenness, orgies,
drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.”
He is basically saying that we need to put our past behavior behind us
and live for God from here on out. And the life we live for God is different from
the description of our past life. Christians don’t behave the same as
non-Christians when it comes to sexuality.
With that
background in mind, how does technology fit into the picture? Technology,
whether it is TV, video, or Internet based, can bring us realistic portrayals
of sexual situations that in turn trigger the strong sexual desires that are
built into us. With men, the strong desires that are aroused through what we
see can be very powerful. The Bible calls these lusts. These lusts then can
give rise to sin if not dealt with.
Jesus tells
us that, “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28. From this simple statement, we
can see that Jesus’ standard is very high. If we are to avoid this kind of
potential sexual sin, we need to take precautions. Jesus’ very next statement is to say that if
our eye offends us, we should pluck it out. Now we could debate whether he was
serious, or whether he was using hyperbole to prove a point, but nevertheless,
it’s obvious he takes this very seriously, and we should take whatever
precautions we can to avoid this sort of sinning. The Apostle Peter wrote to
his readers, “I beg you to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul.” (I Peter 2:11) Peter knew that lusts and strong desires can actually
make war against our very souls. We are to abstain from such lusts. They can
harm us deep within our psyche. Paul told Timothy to flee from such lusts. So
the admonition for us is to do whatever we can to avoid situations that produce
these self-destructive lusts and enable them to flourish.
The problem
with lust is that it is never satisfied. Sexual immorality of all kinds
promises that it will meet the inner longings of our souls, but it never does.
We are trapped into an ever-deepening desire for more, and the satisfaction we
derive from our sin becomes less and less. God’s secret to happiness is what
Jesus taught the people in the Sermon on the Mount—Happy is the man who hungers
and thirsts for righteousness. While
this seems totally foreign to the modern mind, it is God’s way of finding
satisfaction. Do we believe God or the world system? Our direction and focus
need to be toward a life of righteousness.
In
Ephesians 5:10, Paul tells us that we should find out what pleases the Lord. In
verse 11 he tells us not to have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness, and then in verse 12 he explains that it is shameful to even speak
about things which are done by them in secret.
In other words, there are things that displease God that people do in
secret, and it’s shameful for Christians to even speak about these things. But
isn’t this what happens when we view certain scenes on TV or over the Internet?
Aren’t we looking in on what people are doing or talking about in secret?
So let’s
take these ideas and put them together. We as Christians are to avoid the
immorality that is initiated in our minds by the things which we see, and we
are to not even talk about the kinds of things that people do under the cover
of darkness or in secret. Focusing our attention on these things can trigger
strong desires that war on our souls and do great spiritual damage.
So what
does that tell us about TV viewing for example? Doesn’t this mean that we
should take every precaution in our viewing to avoid those programs and
commercials that either trigger immoral thoughts in our minds, or display or
discuss immoral activities in detail? In
this case, I’m not even talking about pornography. I’m just suggesting that we
take great care not to become careless and accustomed to immorality and casual
sexual content because in doing so, our own minds can become fertile ground for
imagined sexual activity that Jesus condemns.
If these
things are true, then what does that say about actual pornography? There’s no
question that exposure to graphic sexual material will produce strong sexual
lusts in our minds and in our bodies that we cannot legitimately act upon from
God’s point of view. This being the case, we as Christian men need to take
every precaution to avoid getting ourselves into the trap that pornography
represents.
Technology
itself can be addicting as we have discussed before. When you add pornography
to the technology, you have a powerful mix. The Bible often speaks of diligence
when it comes to the Christian life. It takes a great deal of diligence to
avoid the entrapping nature of pornography. What are some of the things we can
do to avoid the trap?
First, I
think we need to look at our lives to see if we really have the desire to live
a life that is honoring to God no matter what the cost. This is where a lot of
it falls down. We may claim that we are Christians, and we very well may be,
but we don’t really want to sacrifice the time and attention that it takes to
live a consistent, biblical, righteous Christian life. We may enjoy our sin too
much! We may believe that God isn’t really interested in our good if He would
withhold all of these things from us and ask us to live such a narrow life. So
we need to make up our minds. Do we want a God-honoring life or not?
Second, we
need to look at our personal spiritual disciplines carefully. Are we regularly
taking the time to pray? Are we reading, studying, and meditating on the
Scriptures regularly? Are we regularly involved with other Christians in
fellowship, prayer, and ministry? If not, we are making ourselves vulnerable in
many areas including our sexuality. If you are weak in any of these areas, take
immediate steps to improve. Start today by getting in the Word and taking time
to pray. Don’t make any excuses to miss church on Sunday. If there’s a church
prayer meeting going on somewhere near you, be there.
In addition
to making sure our Christian life is being supported the way it needs to be,
here are some other steps you can take to increase accountability and provide
protection for yourself and your family.
1. Make sure TV viewing is open and public within the home.
Children should not have televisions in their rooms where they can watch what
they want without supervision.
2. If you live alone and can’t control what you watch, get
rid of the TV. If you can’t handle the Internet, have it disconnected (Remember
Jesus telling us to pluck out our eye or cut off our arm?)
3. Computer use should be open and public within the
home—for everyone. Children should not have computers with Internet access or
DVD capabilities in their rooms. They may fight you on this and tell you what
every other child gets to have, but that’s ok. We are Christians who desire to
please God, and so we have different procedures.
4. Husbands, give your wife complete access to your
computer, your browsing history, your Facebook passwords… everything. Ask
your wife to keep you accountable.
5. Establish an accountability partner who has your
permission to ask you anything he wants about your viewing and browsing habits.
6. If necessary, sign up for a filtering service that will
email your browsing history to your wife or an accountability person.
7. Under no circumstances should teenagers have a smart
phone. That sounds radical, I know, but why do any of us have to have access to
the Internet 24/7? Do you honestly think a 16-year-old boy can keep away from
pornography if he has Internet access on his phone wherever he is? Think about
it! If your son wants to know why you don’t trust him, explain that you don’t
even trust yourself.
In conclusion, we realize that developments in technology
will continue. We have no way of knowing what the future will bring, and what
kinds of devices we will have to adjust to in the years ahead. But know this,
we must live for the glory of God in all areas of life, and technology is one
of those areas that needs to be brought under the Lordship of Christ. We need
to be discerning, and we need to pass on discernment skills to our children, so
they won’t be overwhelmed by the alluring, addicting devices that are sure to
come. Let’s pray earnestly and ask God for the wisdom we all will need to live
lives that are pleasing to Him in all areas.
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?
Realize
and accept the fact that you do have the power to control the technology
and to manage it for the glory of God.
On the
personal level, make the conscious decision that “wherever you are, be all
there.” (Jim Elliott)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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?”
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.
In the
previous two sections I have discussed the fact that some of our technology has
a way of increasing our distractedness and decreasing our ability to attend to
or focus on a task for an extended period of time. In addition, technology has
the potential to become an idol for us. One of the reasons that these issues
concern me as a Christian, is that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us
through His Word. That is, He has communicated with the human race through
written words. If we do not know how to read, the communication from God is
hindered. But most of us know how to read. The problem many have is the
inability to focus for an extended amount of time in order to think about and
analyze what God has said. In addition to not being able to focus, we have the
problem of not being able to think deeply about the text.
In Joshua
1:8, God says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but
you shall meditate on it day and night.” He goes on to explain that meditating
on it brings success in our lives. This is not the kind of success to which
most Americans aspire, but it is the kind of success Christians should work
toward. It is the successful life of faith that builds a strong relationship
with God and with other people. This success is founded on the wisdom of God
that is gained as we think about and reflect on what God has said.
But in
contradiction to this, we have developed a culture that is focused more on the
visual media such as TV, movies, and Internet browsing.
Here’s an example of the time spent per day by percentages
of young people on various media:
watch television: 84 percent 3:04 hours
use a computer 54 percent 48 minutes
read a magazine 47 percent 14 minutes
read a book 46 percent 23 minutes
play video games 41 percent 32 minutes at console; 17
minutes with handheld
watch videos/dvd 39 percent 32 minutes
watch prerecorded TV 21 percent 14 minutes
go to a movie; 13 percent.
(Dumbest, page 89)
There are
many hindrances to extended thinking and meditating on God’s Word. One of the
more recent hindrances is the growing inability to focus on anything for an
extended length of time. We are becoming more accustomed to reading web pages
where there are multiple windows open begging us to look at them to see what is
being advertised or what new event has been posted to Facebook. Throughout most
of the texts we read online there are hyperlinks that tempt us to click in
order to follow some rabbit trail of thought. While this helps us to extend our
knowledge in some way, it also interrupts the flow of thought. Even if we don’t
click on the link, we are interrupted by the split-second thought of the
possibility of clicking on it. As I mentioned previously, these constant
interruptions of our train of thought change the way we think so that it
becomes more and more difficult to focus for an extended period of time. Just
ask someone under the age of 35 how it would feel to sit down for 30 or 40
minutes to read their Bible and think about it, with no background music, no
TV, no cell phone beeps, and no interruptions of any kind. Just the thought of
it brings pain and panic. Or how about asking them to listen to even an
interesting lecture for 45 minutes? More pain and more panic.
Nicholas
Carr, in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,
explains that research shows that the average person spends between 19 and 27
seconds at the most on any web page he visits.
How can a person who is used to this kind of scanning, sit down and hear
from God through His Word? You simply can’t take in a page of Scripture in 19
seconds! Rather than doing a lot of reading ourselves and encouraging our
children to read, we spend time in front of the TV or with our computers and
teach our children to do the same!
Consider
the important impact reading time has on student performance in school:
“Buried in
the depths of the Kaiser report Generation M is a startling finding about
different media use and student achievement. It shows that leisure reading of
any kind correlates more closely with a student’s grades than any other media.
While eight to 18 year olds with high and low grades differed by only one
minute in TV time, they differed in reading time by 17 minutes, (46-29) a huge
discrepancy in relative terms ( a 36 percent drop in leisure reading for kids
with low grades.” (Dumbest, page 90) What this is saying is that
students with low grades spend considerably less time reading than students
with good grades.
We’ve become addicted to our
screens: “The screen…promotes multitasking and discourages
single-tasking, hampering the deliberate focus on a single text, a discrete
problem. ‘Screen mindedness’ prizes using search engines and clicking 20
websites not the plodding, 10-hour passage through a 300 page novel. It
searches for information, fast, too impatient for the long-term acquisition of
facts and stories and principles.” (Dumbest, page 115)
This kind of multitasking and
rapid skimming is detrimental to grasping the facts, stories and principles
found in any text, but most important for us, God’s Word.
If you are
a Christian, you need to take this information seriously. As a parent, you need
to make sure that your young person is not losing his ability to concentrate.
You have a responsibility to set the example and then establish the expectation
that in your home there will be technology-free times when time is devoted to
quiet reading and meditation. Just writing the previous sentence sounded
strange. When does anyone have time where there is no input from TV, radio, or the
Internet? Some people will suggest that reading is a thing of the past and is
no longer necessary in our time when our technology serves as the conduit for
our information. The problem is, and you need to think about this carefully –
the problem is that the God of the universe has chosen to speak to us in
written words. Those who cannot read those words either because of illiteracy
or inability to focus, will not hear from God!
But, you
may say, is it necessary to read? What about listening to God’s Word? Doesn’t
that count? The answer is yes, but how often does anyone sit and listen to the
Word of God being read to them? How easy is it in our video-centric culture to
sit and listen to words being read for an extended period of time with no other
interruptions or input. I think you can see that listening happens less than
reading does and is at least equally difficult.
One of the
things educators and researches are noticing is that we are becoming good at
skimming, but we are losing our ability to interpret what we read accurately,
as well as the ability to think carefully and deeply about what we read. The
reason this is important is that when God communicates through words, He is
communicating truth and concepts that are not necessarily understood with a
quick skim. Many of the sentences in the Bible are long and complex, and many
modern readers are unable to understand such complexity, whether it is in the
Bible or a book about the Bible. Think about how important this is. God desires
to speak to us through His Word, and we may be unable to understand what He is
saying because we have become surface readers and have not trained our minds to
think deeply and logically about what He is saying. That’s something that
should not be dismissed lightly.
So let me
encourage those of you who desire to be faithful to God, to train yourself to
put aside the technology and focus on the Word of God for extended amounts of
time. Let me encourage you to insist that the children for whom you are
responsible do the same. They will grumble and complain, but it is essential
for them to learn how to hear from God.
Read to
children early in their life, and then encourage them to read for themselves
throughout their growing up years. Have regular conversations with your
children. You’ll be keeping the relationship strong, and at the same time you
will be giving them the vocabulary they need to navigate through life.
Mark Bauerlein writes, “Everything
depends on the oral and written language the infant-toddler-child-teen hears
and reads throughout the day, for the amount of vocabulary learned inside the
fifth-grade classroom alone doesn’t come close to the amount needed to
understand fifth-grade textbooks. They need a social life and a home life that
deliver requisite words to them, put them into practice, and coax kids to speak
them.” (Dumbest, page 138)
This is especially true in the
Christian home where you want your children to pick up the vocabulary that they
need to describe God’s relationship to man and our relationship to Him. In a
recent study of adolescents and twenty-somethings, it was observed that young
people simply do not have the vocabulary to describe their thoughts and
feelings about God and the truths the Bible teaches about God.
Another thing that the
all-encompassing presence of technology does is allows us to pursue topics that
are of interest to us and to avoid topics that we don’t think are all that
interesting. We can have it our way. Now
when it comes to educating our children and ourselves, it’s important to expose
ourselves to things we may not necessarily be interested in. When someone
proposes a class in some unfamiliar area of Christian doctrine, there is a
tendency to avoid that class or to allow your children to avoid such a study.
Bauerlein writes, “For education to
happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of
interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine, and
conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity.” (Dumbest,
page 145)
From this I take it that we
shouldn’t try to get off easy when it comes to what kind of learning we subject
ourselves or our children to. If we continually read things that we are already
interested in, we won’t learn much. With our technology, the tendency is to
read about and follow trains of thought that are of interest to us. Because
there is so much information available, we do not need to explore the unknown
or difficult. One would think that having the proliferation of technology would
allow people to learn more and grow more. But the natural tendency is the
reverse. It is not natural to delve into something difficult or that we think
we wouldn’t understand. But if we don’t, our minds won’t be strengthened.
As technology moves along, there is
a tendency to substitute web reading for book reading. As an older person who
was raised on books, I find that I read the web much the same way I read a
book. This is not the case with younger readers. And if I spend more and more
time reading online rather than in a linear text such as a book, my brain will
be affected and changed as well. Book reading affects regions of the brain for
language, memory, and visual processing whereas web reading affects the brain
areas for decision making and problem solving. (Dumbest, page 120) Why
the difference? Because when reading the web there are hyperlinks and ads and
other messages along the periphery of the text that causes your brain to
constantly be making decisions as to the relative importance of these links.
Deep
reading is hindered by problem solving. Intelligence requires taking things
into short term memory and then weaving it into conceptual schemas in long term
memory. If our problem-solving areas of the brain are active, the concentration
and focus aren’t there to transfer information into long term memory. Our
problem-solving capacity has been using up brain power to decide which links to
click on or avoid. This can overload working memory which results in
distractedness, “understanding” weakened by overloading
Why am I
emphasizing all of this detail? Because I think we as Christians should have an
idea of what’s at stake. As we read the Bible and religious texts about the
Bible and Christian devotional life, God wants us to meditate and reflect
deeply on the truths they contain. In order for that to happen, we need to
understand what we read and then take that information deeply into our lives
where all sorts of interconnections can be made so that it affects our life.
It’s important to understand that out-of-control technology and its resulting
distractedness can rewire our brain in such a way that understanding and
assimilating the truths of Scripture can be severely impaired. We certainly
shouldn’t want that to happen to ourselves, and we especially need to be
careful to prevent that from happening to those who are most susceptible to
this danger, our children.
So what are some concrete steps you can take
to help prevent this from happening to you and your children?
Limit exposure to visual media – whether it be TV, videos or web-based media. I remember way back when our kids were small, my wife was concerned about Sesame Street. Everyone was proclaiming the virtues of such educational material, but she wasn’t so sure. In retrospect, after having observed middle school and high school students up close in an educational setting for over 40 years, I believe she was right. The images on programs such as Sesame Street change every couple of minutes either causing or adding to children’s inability to focus for long stretches of time.
Encourage creative, imaginative play. Reduce the number of choices children have to play with at any given time. When your children are faced with which one of 20 different toys they should play with at any given moment, it increases the decision-making part of the brain, but reduces the thoughtful part.
Read to your children often and encourage them to read when they are old enough. Let them see you reading, thus setting a good example that they will want to follow.
When using technology personally or with children, use it for specific purposes and reduce the impulsiveness of it. In other words, don’t jump to the technology to fill every 5-minute void in something to do. Don’t give your children the example of interrupting one activity with another as demanded by your technology. In other words, when you are writing in a word processing program, as I am right now, don’t keep switching to see all of the world-shaping events in the news and weather and Facebook changes that have taken place in the last 5 minutes. Let it be obvious that you stay on a task for extended periods of time and teach them to do the same.
Don’t allow children to have the technology in their rooms. Let everything be out in the open so that you can see and control how its used.
As strange as it sounds, create times of quiet in the house where kids can read and work on homework while parents read a book or magazine. Leave the TV off. Make sure cell phones are unavailable for texting or web browsing after a certain time.
Teach your children explicitly how to use technology as I’ve outlined it here. If they need to do word processing, provide a computer that has no Internet connection or games so that they only use the tool for one thing. They must be overtly taught the skill of focus rather than distraction.
All of this is so
that in the Fullness of Time He would:
Reconcile and gather
all things together in Christ
“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness
should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether
things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His
cross. And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked
works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to
present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—”
(Colossians 1:19–22, NKJV)
“having made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the
dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all
things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him”
(Ephesians 1:9–10, NKJV).
“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to
Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing
their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation”
(2 Corinthians 5:18–19, NKJV).
The goal and purpose as stated in these passages is that God
has purposed in eternity past that everything will be reconciled back to the
Son of God. We live in a fallen world, and mankind is in rebellion against God.
There’s been a separation. But God is going to bring it all back eventually. Every
knee will ultimately bow to Christ. Christ is to be all in all.
Put an end to all
rule and authority
“Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God
the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power” (1
Corinthians 15:24, NKJV).
All other competing powers will be brought under His
control.
Destroy death, the
last enemy
“The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1
Corinthians 15:26, NKJV).
Show the exceeding
riches of His grace and display the manifold wisdom of God.
God’s plan from eternity past is that His Son and the people
He has redeemed will be a display for all creation to see. It will display how
great and inexhaustible the wisdom of God are and how amazing His grace is that
He would take rebellious treasonous subjects and transform them by His love and
grace into His sons and daughters, adopted into His family and made co-heirs
with His Son Jesus Christ.
“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding
riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians
2:7, NKJV).
“To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might
be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly
places” (Ephesians 3:10, NKJV).
Jesus Christ will
reign forever and ever with His bride, the Church
“And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to
take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed
us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth””
(Revelation 5:9–10, NKJV).
“Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud
voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms
of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!””
(Revelation 11:15, NKJV).
“There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor
light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign
forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5, NKJV).
God will be all in
all and will dwell with His people
“Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the
Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God
may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28, NKJV).
“And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall
be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation
21:3, NKJV).
The mission will have been accomplished. God will have
demonstrated His glory and the centrality and supremacy of His Son by creating
and sustaining all things through Him, showing His grace by reconciling sinful
people to Himself, by demonstrating His justice by not overlooking sin but
punishing it in Christ, and ultimately reconciling everything together to
Himself so that God Himself will dwell forever with His people.
Highly exalted Him. We read in Philippians that because of Jesus’
obedience “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name
which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9, NKJV). In his letter to the
Ephesians Paul explains it this way: “He raised Him from the dead and seated
Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and
power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
age but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:20–21, NKJV).
Jesus Christs has been placed in a position of great glory
at God’s right hand, and this is far above all other authorities that exist in
the universe. The author of the book of Hebrews explains it this way:
“You have made him a little lower than the angels; You
have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your
hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He
put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But
now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made
a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory
and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone”
(Hebrews 2:7–9, NKJV).
Jesus Christ is the God-man. But never forget that He is a
man with a human glorified body. He is the first person to receive his
glorified body and He has His place in heaven as our forerunner. He is the
guarantee that all of those that belong to Him through faith will also have
their place in heaven with Him. He is our anchor behind the veil.
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure
and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the
forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever
according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:19–20, NKJV).
In the Old Testament the temple has a veil separating the
two parts. The part behind the veil where God was could not be entered by
anyone except the High Priest and then only once a year. That veil ripped in
two from top to bottom on the day Christ was crucified. The earthly temple was
a model of what is in heaven. This passage in Hebrews tells us that the way is
now open. Jesus Christ is already there as our forerunner and our anchor behind
the veil. All who belong to Him will have their place with Him in a glorified
body some day.
Christ is central and supreme because He is the One who
obtained eternal redemption for us through His sacrifice on the cross and is
now seated as sovereign in heaven, and every knee will bow before Him
(Philippians 2:10).
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).
God has 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).
God has 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.
God has 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).
God 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.
