The Innocence of Animals

I was watching an episode of NCIS the other night. It is a show about the American navy's criminal investigations department. This particular episode began with a marine in Afghanistan whose job was to clear out mines so that civilian contractors can do their job in a given area. The show began with the sergeant and his specially trained dog that had the ability to sniff out explosives identifying mines. The dog finds a mine, the marine disarms it and then a sniper shoots the marine in the head killing him. The dog is fine. Thus begins the conflict that must be resolved. At the end of the episode NCIS identifies the sniper who is one of the American contractors and when he is accused he pulls his gun provoking the dog to jump on him to protect the special agent. And yes the dog gets shot. I cried. Fortunately the dog survives and even receives a military commendation. But I still cried.

I cried when old Yeller was shot. I cried when Sounder died. I'm a sucker for dogs suffering needlessly. So why didn't I cry for the marine risking his life? For that matter why don't I cry for the thousands of characters on prime-time TV who die? Probably because deep in my soul I know we deserve death. It's what we inherited from Adam. We die because we are bad people. (Rom. 6:23) The heroic character who dies is still human. Yet it's the dog we cry for. We deserve to die not the dog.

I wonder if the ancient Israelites cried when they brought their lambs, bulls or pigeons to be killed in their sacrifices? Did the leper weep over the bird that was killed when he became clean? (Lev. 14:5) Did the man who deceived his neighbor lips tremble when he brought his best ram from his flock to be sacrificed for his guilt. Or how about the person who unintentionally sins. Did he grieve over the female goat that died because of his mistake? (Lev. 4:27-29) For that matter what was in Abel's heart that inclined him to shed the blood of the firstborn of his flock resulting in God's favor? What was Mary & Joseph thinking as they brought two young pigeons when presenting Jesus to the temple? (Lk. 2:22-24) Perhaps a better question is, do we every think about the agony Jesus went through when on the Cross He died for us? He was innocent!

Deep in our souls we hold the truth of our creation. Animals are our companions. (Gen. 2:18-19) We talk to to them. We get upset when we hear stories of animal cruelty. But we just don't get all that upset of the soldiers who die in the line of fire. Or kids who die in a car accident. What grief do we have for the person who just dies. I am not talking about our family members  and close friends as we have a special connection to them. I am talking about our collective unconscious as a people. You see deep in our souls is the truth of our fall as well. We deserve death. And before we were exposed to the cruelty of the world, God killed an animal to cover our nakedness. (Gen. 3:21) Because of us, blameless animals die because without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins. (Heb.9:22) But when an animal was sacrificed for our sins, our conscience was only temporarily pricked. Something permanent has to happen. And so God himself gave us His only-begotten Son shedding His blood for our conscience. (Heb. 9:14) You see, the blood of goats & birds can never truly take away our sins. They serve only as a reminder that God in His mercy allows us to continue living. On the surface of our thoughts we seldom think about it. But our conscience are often pricked when we see something blameless die instead. Our conscience should be pricked when we see Jesus die for us as well. After all, he is blameless.

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:16-17)

Why The Word of Faith Movement Lacks Faith in God

The Word of Faith movement is synonymous with the prosperity gospel. The movement claims that our words have power. One can speak things into reality. Name it & claim it. Of course this serves the prosperity gospel well. No one ever says I claim my poverty! No, they claim wealth, health and whatever they covet. And that's the point. Without the Law the gospel makes no sense. (Gal. 3:24) Hence, there is very little exhortation to repent. Thus, those who adhere to the prosperity gospel continue in their sins like coveting! And this shows in their lack of faith!

Adherents to the prosperity gospel have faith in themselves not in God. If they didn't get that big check or job promotion, it is because they did not speak it into existence. It's as simple as that! And this is contrary to what the bible says. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread. (Mt. 6:11) The writer of the "Letter of Hebrews" exhorts his readers to be content with what you have. (Heb. 13:5-6) The prodigal son claimed his inheritance and lost it! (Lk. 15:13)  Are you getting it? We are to see what God is providing for us and not covet what others have. God loves us so much more than the birds, that he will clothe us and feed us. (Mt. 6:25-26) If you truly believe in God, you will have faith that that this is so! We can see this in the very first words of the Twenty-Third Psalm.

The Lord is my Shepherd,  I shall not want. (Ps. 23:1)

God will provide for us! What shepherd does not lead his sheep to green pasture to graze and quiet waters to quench the thirst. (Ps. 23:2) False shepherds do but not the Good Shepherd! (Jn. 10:14) Is God so weak and unloving that He won't take care of us? Jesus tells us not to worry! (Mt. 6:25) He is guiding us so that we will lack nothing. So if you are lacking a need in your life, be humble and ask God, your loving Father, for it! Don't be a spoiled brat like the prodigal son & demand it. That's tantamount to saying to God, "You are dead to me!" Hence, you have no faith in Him!

East of Eden in The 21st Century

Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful
Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen
Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme John Milton, Paradise Lost

We all live east of Eden. None of us are innocent. (Lk. 13:1-5) Death surrounds us. We may die at the end of a gun barrel with our hand or someone else holding it. We may die by a tornado or tsunami. We could fall off a ladder or be hit by a car. Or drive the car ourselves. Recently bombs exploded at an annual event in Boston. And bombs exploded in Iraq. And if that doesn't kill you, disease will. We all have to die sometime. Death awaits us, east of Eden.

But a glorious future also awaits us. A future that is beyond death.  The world that surrounds us is not the finished product. The same book that describes how man lost paradise also tells how one day there will be another Garden with another Tree of Life. (Rev. 22:1-5) It will be for God's elect, those whose names are written in the Book of Life. (Rev. 13:8) No more will there be bad people. (Rev. 21:8) Nor will there be sickness. And because there will be no more bad people and no more sickness there will be no more death. (Rev. 21:4) Paradise will be restored. This is the hope for all who put their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. (Acts 4:11-12) The elect in God knows this is a bad world made up of bad people. After all, God's word says so. (Rm. 3:10-12) The disciples of Jesus know that even planet earth is looking for a future redemption. (Rm. 8:20-25) Our future hope is to dwell with God for eternity. Not in the fanciful imagination of our minds but on a new earth with a new heaven. Not separate but united. And compared to eternity, living in the east of Eden is not very long at all.

New Jerusalem by Mollie Freeman

After Suicide, Redemption?

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (Jn 9:1-7)

Suicide is hard to deal with. Losing a family member to suicide is hard to process. With the recent death of a famous pastor's son, much has been said in social media about suicide. Questions like, "If a Christian kills himself, does he go to heaven?" are being posted on various boards. Or "What does the Bible say about suicide?" are being debated and discussed. All of this leads, depending on one's sophistication, into issues of atonement, salvation and other doctrines that various denominations may hold. Clarity is being sought as well as disclosures of one's own battles with mental health including my own. After all, we want to know where God is in suicide.

In my tradition, we have the doctrine of original sin. It states that after the Fall man became corrupted  which means "our own nature is inclined to evil". (Gn. 6:5, Ps. 58:3) And so we deserve "God's wrath and damnation." Why do people do bad things? The answer is original sin. In other words, we are bad people. Jesus, Himself, says so! (Mk.10:18) This is hard to swallow if you believe otherwise. Adam and Eve were promised death if they disobeyed God. (Gn. 2:17) That promise holds true today.We die! Now most of us expect to die from an illness like cancer or heart disease. It's not that we want to but we see these diseases as natural causes. When a person dies in a car accident or from self-infliction, we are shocked and horrified because it was not expected. We ask ourselves how can this happen? It can happen because we no longer have the safety of the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, one disease that often does not garner society's sympathy is mental illness.

Mental disease is an illness. One does not choose to be mentally ill no more than does one choose to have cancer. Depression kills. I know from personal experience and have written about it here. So where is God when a person commits suicide? 

As stated earlier, we die because our hearts are inclined to evil and we deserve death. This is a  biblical truth that needs to be recognized. But Jesus came to save us from our sins that lead to death and eternal punishment. The promise from The Prophets is that The Law will be written on our hearts. (Jer. 31:33, Ex. 20:1-17) Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets by taking the curse of eternal punishment upon Himself so that we may have eternal life with Him instead. (Mt. 5:13-20) Jesus was not saying that the blind man was not a sinner but that he was blind as part of his nature. And it this very nature that Jesus came to address. What is important is that the works of God may be displayed in us. I survived my depression by God's grace alone. But more importantly people are asking questions. The disciples asked a question. The answer they got was not the one they expected but they got it! They even saw it. While we should mourn with a family's loss, let us ask the questions God wants us to ask. And this has been happening. We cannot bring back the dead but we can seek the Light for ourselves. And people are seeking the Light. This, I say, is redemption. Asking questions and getting answers. But let's be careful. If we think we already know the asnwer, we may be wrong! After all, there are false doctrines and correct doctrines. We cannot believe anything we want!

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. (Jn 9:35-41)

Why Jesus Died & Rose From The Dead

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 2 Cor. 5:14-15

A Childlike Faith or No You Can't Believe Anything You Want!

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and went away. (Mt. 19:13-15)

When I was a child I did what I was told. I had two loving parents who taught me right from wrong. They took an interest in my development especially when it came to my education.  I was expected to learn from my teachers. And I did learn from my teachers. I learned that 2+2=4. I learned many other equations and as I advance in my grades these equations became more complex. But nonetheless, 2+2=4. It does not equal 22 or 35 or 59. There can only be one right equation.

Now that I am an adult I find that I should still be a student. I look for articles and read them with the hopes of advancing my understanding of theology, the discipline of my chosen profession. After all, the word, 'disciple', means student. Now a funny thing has happened to us grown ups. We forget there is only one right answer. So we begin to argue among ourselves. And our arguments never succeed because each one of us thinks we are right forgetting that each one of sees through a glass dimly. It's as if we somehow believe 2+2 can somehow be 4 or 9 or 36 or maybe 128,649. It's all just an opinion, right? Try telling that to your third grade teacher. Or the teller at your bank when arguing that the reason you are overdrawn is because when you added up the numbers in your checkbook they came out to show there was plenty of money in the bank. Who's going to be right? Theology is no different. It is the Queen of the Sciences according to Thomas Aquinas. Yet we differ on essential doctrine.

In logic there is something called The Law of Non-Contradiction. What this means is that two mutually exclusive statement cannot be true at the same time. For instance, A is B and A is not B both cannot be true. One or the other is true. But often when we stake a position regarding God, each person argues without acknowledging that contradictions need to be addressed. Both contradictory statements need to be examined to see which is true. So how is this done?

The first case in human history where the law of non-contradiction was ignored was in the Garden of Eden. God said, "If you eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will die." Then the serpent says, "No you won't die!" (Gn. 3:4) Eve did not say, "Let me check with the creator on that." She did not go to the source of truth, God, and seek an answer. Probably because the fruit was a delight to her eyes. (Gn. 3:6) In other words she trusted herself too much. And then things got worse after that. The point is, when it comes to being a disciple of Jesus, we need to be humble in our learning not trusting ourselves but God alone and his word. We need to understand that none of us have all the answers but the Bible does. Like children, we must understand that there is a right answer and the teacher, Jesus Himself, has it. If there are differing opinions, well, they all can't be true! and so, with the humility of a student, let us seek the truth because we cannot believe anything we want. Even Jesus lovingly called his disciples children! (Mk. 10:24, Lk. 10:21)

The Divine Origins of Christianity

There are many religions in the world. But which one is true? If one makes the argument that they all can be true then we have the problem of contradictions. And two contradictory facts can't both be true. All religions have a founder who lived and died. Only one has as it's object of worship a man who lived and died and rose from the dead. One can visit the tombs of humans. But for The Son of God, well he is not there, He has risen. In fact Jesus, Himself is Resurrection and Life. Why then should anyone be contented with a man made religion when he can have life eternal? 

 

 

 

 

Joseph's Smith Tomb, Nauvoo, IL

Buddha's Tooth Sanctuary

The tomb of Muhammad, Medina, Saudi Arabia

Confucius tomb, Qufu, China

Inside The Garden Tomb of Jesus, Jerusalem

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:24-26)