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.
How do we know what is true and what is false in everyday life? Isn’t it true that most of us don’t know things from firsthand experience, but rather we learn them through other people who tell us or teach us about truth? For example, where was Abraham Lincoln when he was shot? Or was he shot? Maybe he died of a heart attack. How do we know these things? We don’t know any of this by having seen it with our own eyes. We don’t even know because we personally did hours upon hours of research to find out. Most of us know because someone, probably a teacher in school, and the textbooks we used, told us what happened to Abraham Lincoln.
Most of us who use math at the every-day level don’t know
the truths underlying the math, although we probably could. For example, most
people don’t know from personal investigation how fractions and common
denominators work. But if we use them at all, we were taught how to work with
fractions, and we know that the methods work, and that is good enough for us.
But my point is that we didn’t learn it from personal investigation and
discovery. We believe these principles because people we trusted, and who we
assumed were authorities, taught us, and what they taught us works.
What is interesting to me is how and why we choose the
people we decide to believe. In elementary school and probably through most of
high school we believed what we were told by our parents and teachers. But as
we grew older, we began to distinguish one opinion from another, and we began
to argue and debate whether what we were being told was true or not. What matters
to me is how we decide who to believe when we receive conflicting messages. Politics
is a good case in point. Someone on TV says that the reason we are in the
economic mess we are in is because we are spending billions on unnecessary
wars. (This article was first written in 2013.) There are really two messages
there: 1) the economic mess is caused by the wars, and 2) the wars were
unnecessary. The purpose of this article is not to delve into the politics, but
to observe that people on each side of the argument will rant for hours on
their point of view. How do they know the economic problems are caused by the
war expenditures? How do the people on the other side know that it was not the
wars that caused the economic problems? Have any of these people looked at the
numbers, compared the graphs, and analyzed all of the factors? No! We mostly
listen to what people tell us. For some reason each one of us has a propensity
to believe one explanation of events rather than another. In this particular
example, some believe war caused the mess and some do not. These beliefs are
based on who we have decided to listen to and who we believe. Why do we believe
one source rather than another? Do we have any factual reason for doing so, or are
we going by feelings?
I think the current debate over the Coronavirus is another
similar situation. Some say the President and his team are doing a great job in
handling the crisis. The other side says he should have started earlier, he
shouldn’t have shut down the economy, etc. Here again, I think that very few of
us actually know. We have chosen which news sources we believe because we are
drawn to their arguments, but it’s hard to actually get to the truth. Most of
us don’t analyze the graphs, we aren’t epidemiologists, we don’t know how
viruses work. Truth is out there, but it is hard to get at.
Shouldn’t we be interested in truth? What is the truth? In
many cases we could know if we took the time to do the research. Take
historical events for example. I brought up Abraham Lincoln a moment ago. How
does one know he was assassinated? I’m not a philosopher nor a historian so
this is not a rigorous academic treatise, but it seems to me that to verify
historic events, which no one living now witnessed, we need to go back to
original documents, news reports, photographs, etc., and put together the best
scenario we can as to what actually happened. This takes a lot of time – more
time than we have if we are trying to determine the truth about everything we
hear. So, we decide who we will believe and base our opinions on what they say.
These methods of determining truth pretty much work for day
to day living. But the possibility exists that we have chosen to believe things
which are not true simply because of who we listen to. We need to be open to
the possibility that what we believe might be false. We need to be ready to
discuss our ideas, and to probe other people’s ideas, and to give and receive
facts and arguments in order to get at the truth. The problem is that today
several things stand in the way of discussions of this sort. We’ll discuss
these in more detail later, but basically discussions of truth end because 1)
People don’t really care what the truth is – it doesn’t matter; 2) Truth is
felt at the emotional level and so if it feels correct, it must be true no
matter what the facts say; 3) Truth can’t be known so why bother talking about
it; and 4) Truth doesn’t exist.
My main focus in these articles is to focus on religious
truth, specifically the truth of Christianity and the implications. But, as I
do that, I also want you to begin thinking about all truth claims you hear,
whether in the realm of politics, advertising, advice about health, etc. Why do
you believe what you believe and how do you know you’re listening to the people
that are telling you the truth? But, in future articles I want us to think
about how we as Christians get at the truth of Christianity, and why we believe
it is true. I want us to think about the implications of saying that it is
true. I also want us to see how the four hindrances to seeking truth even
impact our understanding of the Bible and the differences of opinion among us.
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.
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.
The argument I am trying to make in this series of articles is that Jesus Christ, the God-man, is the core of all knowledge, all science, our very being, and He is the Supreme ruler of all things. As we read in the gospel of John chapter one verse 14, John tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word is the second person of the Trinity. Earlier in the first chapter of John he wrote that in the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So now we see that the Word becomes flesh; this thing called the Word becomes human, takes on a body and comes here! We know this person as Jesus Christ. There are several passages of scripture that I would like us to look at, and I’m going to quote them verbatim so that you can see what the scripture is claiming.
“He [speaking
of Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation.” (Colossians 1:15, NKJV)
“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness
should dwell,” (Colossians 1:19, NKJV)
“in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.” (Colossians 2:3, NKJV)
“For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily;” (Colossians 2:9, NKJV)
“[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; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His
person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by
Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”
(Hebrews 1:2–3, NKJV)
According to Colossians and Hebrews, Jesus Christ is the
image of the invisible God. The writer to the Hebrews says He is the express
image of God. In other words, He is the exact impression of God. Just like we
might make a stamp and impress an image onto a block of clay, Jesus Christ is
the impress stamp, the image of God the Father. These verses further tell us
that all the fullness of the godhead dwelt in Jesus Christ bodily. That means
that when Jesus was walking around on this earth getting his feet dusty, He was
the embodiment of the entirety of the godhead. In addition to that, Paul wrote
to the Colossians that all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are to be
found in Jesus Christ himself. The word all
leaves nothing out. Every bit of wisdom that exists in the universe has its
origin in Jesus Christ. All the knowledge of science, chemistry , astronomy,
psychology, sociology, and so forth, are rooted in Christ. Any wisdom that
there is in the universe has its source in Jesus Christ. This is why His being
is central and supreme.
There can be nothing said of someone that is more profound
and an acknowledgment of the supremacy of that one and the centrality of that
one than to say that He is the creator of all things, the entirety of God
almighty is contained in Him, and that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
dwell in Him.
The purpose of this series of articles is to demonstrate the
centrality and supremacy of Christ as given to us in the Scriptures. The first
part of this series I’m calling “In the Beginning.” The first verse in the
Bible tells us, “In the beginning God …” Obviously this means that in the
beginning, God was there before anything else existed. In John 1:1 the Bible
tells us “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word
was God.” Before anything else existed, God was there, as was the Word, and the
Bible says that the Word was God. We also know from Genesis 1:2 that the Holy
Spirit was also present at creation hovering over the waters. These verses lay
the foundation for the Christian worldview and philosophy. We are going to
discover that “The Word” is none other than the Son of God and the man Jesus
Christ, and He is the center of everything.
What we can see from this is that the Trinity, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit were all present at creation. In John 17:24, Jesus testifies
that God the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world. Earlier in
that same chapter Jesus looks forward to the day when He will share again in
the glory He had with the Father before the world began. What we know, then, is
that within the Trinity there was love, communication, and glory before
anything else had been created. Should we be surprised then that we as human
beings, who have been created in the image of God, have personalities that
include love and communication as part of our nature?
These truths lay the foundation for what comes next. In Genesis
1:1 we learn that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In
John 1:1-3 we learn that the Word, that was in the beginning with God, and was God,
created all things, and there’s nothing that’s been created that He did not
create. Therefore, as we look around, everything we see around us has been
created by the Word, the Son of God. Furthermore, according to John 1:14, “The
Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
“He (speaking
of Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that
are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And
He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Colossians
1:15–17, NKJV)
“[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; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His
person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by
Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”
(Hebrews 1:2–3, NKJV)
What do we learn from these passages? Jesus Christ the Son of
God created all things including thrones, dominions, principalities, and
powers. We further learn that He made everything for Himself. Just as we
sometimes create artwork or a piece of furniture for our own use and enjoyment,
Jesus Christ did the same with all of creation. In addition, we learn that He
holds everything together. Why is it important to consider the centrality and
supremacy of Christ? Because He is the foundation of all of creation, and He
supports and holds it together for His own pleasure and glory.
Let’s think about these ideas in a different way. In the
beginning all that existed was a 3-person God who existed in a spiritual form,
that is, He did not have a body. And yet there was communication and love among
the members of this Trinity. At some point before time began, this triune God
decided to create the universe. All of the atoms and molecules that make up our
universe, our world , and our bodies, were created out of nothing through the Word
of this God. And what John tells us in John chapter one is that this Word, that
created all things, is God himself, and that He is currently holding all things
together. If that’s not amazing to you, I don’t know what it would take to
amaze you!
I think what we need to do as Christians is to try to put
aside the conception of these things as being religion or religious teaching.
The Bible is saying, and we as Christians believe, that these statements are
actually true. This truth is at the core of all science and all history and, in
fact, all knowledge. There actually is a God who exists in three persons, and
who created all things by His word. I would go so far as to say that if you do
not believe this to be true, then it is likely that you are not actually a
Christian, because these statements in the Bible, are the foundation and the
core of all the rest that follows.
In these blog posts, I’ve been musing about the purpose of
life and how God fits into the picture. The Bible clearly describes our
condition as one of rebellion and sin against God. He is our creator, and we
have rebelled against Him. The punishment for that rebellion, or sin, is death –
eternal separation from God forever.
But the Bible presents us with it calls the Gospel – the Good
News. The good news is that Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity, took
on human flesh and came here to live among us. He did not do this merely to be
a good example. What good is a good example if we don’t want to follow that
example, or are incapable of following that example?
The gist of the Good News of the Christian message is this:
1) Jesus Christ came and took our punishment on Himself
when He died on the cross.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the [cross],
that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes
you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised
for our iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5)
For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
2) God offers salvation and forgiveness as a gift to
everyone who repents and believes the Gospel.
Repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:15)
Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now
commands all men everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:30)
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is
eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed
our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
3) God offers to give us His righteousness in exchange
for our sin.
For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and
it was accounted to him for righteousness.” But to him who does not work, but
believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also
for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our
Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:3, 23)
And be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which
is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
which is from God by faith. (Philippians 3:9)
4) God offers eternal life to those who trust Him with
their souls.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16, 17)
