Resurrection morning

So the women went looking for the body of Jesus in the tomb, after his death. It had been quite a disastrous thing that happened to them. All their hopes, dreams, ambitions and object of affection had gone down in the grave with Jesus. He was everything to them and much more and it was all gone. When things happen they often have a way of becoming part of people's lives so much that they expect it to be so always. We get used to being in a certain situation and before long that can become the norm in our life and we start to not look for anything else. It was like that with those women early in the morning. They had resigned themselves to what seemed to be the inevitable. That everything was lost and it would never be any different. They went looking for what their minds had come to expect. What a surprise it must have been when they found something totally different. The rolled away stone revealed an empty grave and the two men that stood there said, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!"

Theirs had been a natural reaction, for the mind can get conditioned to only expect certain things and needs to be cultivated to receive what it doesn't know. When the others were told these things they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense (Luke 24:11). Jesus confounded everybody though by doing what nobody had expected and thereby showing us that God has not resigned himself to what we humans have come to see as the inevitable in our lives. Now isn't this something to sing, shout and dance about?

Happy Easter!!!!!

THE THINKING CHRISTIAN

Some studies seem to suggest that religious people are less intelligent then agnostics and atheists.

Quote:

Association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious behaviour.  For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and strength of religious beliefs ranged from -.20 to -.25 mean r=-.24).  Three possible interpretations were discussed.  First intelligent A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.  The people are less likely to conform and , thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma.  Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs.  Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence.  Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.

Miron Zuckerman, Jordan Silberman and Judith A. Hall The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposal Explanations.

The present study examined whether IQ relates systematically to denomination and income within the framework of the g nexus, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97).  Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions.  Denominations differ significantly in IQ and income.  Religiosity declines between ages 12 to 17.  It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity.  Ontogenetically speaking this means that contemporary denominations are rank ordered by largely hereditary variations in brain efficiency (i.e. IQ).  In terms of evolution, modern Atheists are reacting rationally to cognitive and emotional challenges, whereas Liberals and, in particular Dogmatics, still rely on ancient, pre-rational, supernatural and wishful thinking.

Helmut Nyborg, The intelligence-religiosity nexus: A representative study of white adolescent Americans, Intelligence, Volume 37, issue 1, January-February 2009, Pages 81-93.

 End of quote.

I don’t know exactly how the authors behind the study came to their conclusion that religious people are less intelligent than agnostics and atheists.  How independent was their research?  What I do know is what’s said in the bible about the correlation between religion/faith and intellect, particularly in the new testament.  John 3:16 says already something, namely “That God so loved the world that he gave Jesus, so that anyone who believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.”  And in 2 Corinthians 5:19 “That God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”  Reconcile is what you do if you want to make things work again with someone else, don’t you?  In this case with everyone in the world who wants to reconcile, for God loves the whole world.  Nothing is said about how smart you have to be to reconcile.  But, God was in Christ, believed in what he was doing and was undoubtedly very intelligent.  Nice thing is, we are invited to be in Christ too!  The apostle Paul said “I am a man in Christ.”  Paul was definitely not a dummy, pretty academic really, had written almost half the new testament.  And the apostle Peter was a fisherman, didn’t do bad either, he wrote the other half, together with John, James, Mathew, mark and Luke, to name a few.  Some were academically minded, others to a lesser degree.  But, for God that makes no difference, because it clearly says in Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor freeman, man nor woman, for all are one in Christ.”  And so on, you could add to that “Neither intelligent nor less intelligent.”  It’s all the same!  Jesus is for everyone and he is the word that was in the beginning, the word that was with God, and the word was God, (John 1:1).  Word is a translation from the original text of the new testament, of the old Greek ‘logos’ that had a broad meaning.  I.e. an idea, thinking itself, opinion, speech, reason, discourse.  But in this case, it seems to refer to all of the cognitive abilities of God.  That same word became human and lived among us, it says in John 1:14.  Jesus that is!  And what is intellect when you are confronted with the one who put together the whole of the universe and who also understands the complexities of being human better then anyone and what we need.  And would that not be reserved for intelligent people, but only for the less intelligent?

It is perhaps significant that the message of Christ, that first took hold in Israel, got its greatest hearing in the then Greek speaking world.  Which is after all the cradle of western rational thinking, empiricism and scientific research in general.  The ancient Greeks really thought about everything under the sun.  Not for nothing they gave us words like philosophy, psychology, anthropology, theology, atom and many more that even today are part of our own language.  But the culture that took human thinking to unprecedented heights, also embraced the logic that is embedded in the gospel (message) of Jesus Christ.  Which is why many of the churches that are mentioned in the new testament were in the Greek regions.  Especially Paul the apostle worked very hard there.  It says in Acts 17 from verse 18 that in Athens a group of epicurean and stoic philosophers wanted to debate with him.  They took him to a meeting of the Areopagus, the place that also housed the highest court of Ancient Athens.  And they said “we would like to know about this new teaching that you are bringing.”  It so happened that the people of Athens and the strangers living there, more then anything else, loved to talk to talk about and listen to the latest ideas.  Paul took up the challenge and explained the gospel to those present.  When he spoke about the resurrection some of them began to ridicule him, but others said “we want to hear more of that!”  Some people even joined Paul and started to believe.  One of them was Dionysius, who was a member of the high court.  A judge no less who must have had considerable intellectual capacities to fill that function.  Yet, he was one of the people who believed.  If you take all these things into account than how can anybody say with certainty that religious people are generally less intelligent than agnostics and atheists?

SORTED!

I used to work with an Irishman called Shaun.  Whenever he was given a job to do he would say rather loud, “Sorted!”  What he meant was “Consider it done!”  You just didn’t have to worry about it, as far as he was concerned it was already finished.

The apostle Paul made an amazing observation, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.”  He said that in Romans 8:18, just before he started painting a graphic picture about the creation that’s subjected to frustration and groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Paul, he’s groaning inwardly too.  Just like everyone else he had to deal with the world around him on a daily basis.  A world very much in pain, showing decay, bondage, corruption, destruction and frustration.  As it does today…….and boy oh boy can things get frustrating sometimes!  But says Paul, in the midst of all that doom and gloom there is also a twinkle of hope of better things to come.  He’s looking forward to that moment of liberation when everything will be brought into what he calls the glorious freedom of the sons of God.  Paul’s living in hope.  It’s not a hope that could be seen as yet, he said, because hope that can be seen is no hope at all.  But he had already tasted the fruits of it and he knew there was more where that came from.  That was enough for him, convinced as he was that everything was eventually gonna give way to something much much better, there was going to be a brand new world.  And that had everything to do with something amazing that had began to happen in the same world he was living in.  When on an ordinary day, just like any other day, with ordinary people going about their daily business, Jesus came along who said, “I am about my Father’s business!”  And what’s happening with this world was his business too!  He hadn’t come because everything was honky dory, far from it.  It was much the same as it is today.  Then as now people wondered at times what the world was coming to.  But, Jesus came to turn things around.  Sometimes when things don’t do so good they have to be turned around don’t they?  And sometimes you even want to get your hands on it when it seems like an impossible task.  Things can appear so destroyed that all there is left is ruins or wreckage.  But you just want to get on with rebuilding it no matter what, you want it that bad.

It's a bit like with those kind of enthusiasts that get going on a wreck of an old car that’s been rusting away in an old shed and hasn’t seen the light of day for years?  You think they can’t do nothing with it, it’s in that bad a condition.  An impossible situation  But they just start off with that determined look and you don’t see much of them for some time.  But after a while they come out again with the most enormous grin on their faces.  And one of them says “sorted” as they proudly present the most splendid chrome plated shiny specimen of a car that you would never expect rolling again this side of 1950.  Well, Jesus was…..eh, was kind of like a mr. Sortelius too.  The kind of person who doesn’t blink an eye starting on the most difficult job.  What with everything about him being as impossible as it comes, beginning with his birth which was a virgin birth.  Mary had thrown her hands in the air with despair when she heard about it, saying “how can this be!”, (Luke 1:34).  But she was told “with God nothing shall be impossible”, (Luke 1:37).  You could say that Jesus, right from the word go, had the word impossible written all over him.  He had the right credentials to do the job at hand, the one he had come for.  Not to rebuild a car that was scrapped of course, but starting work on a world that most people resigned themselves to as not getting better than it was very quickly soon.  The thing is that to change the world you got to change people first and Jesus was good at that.  He himself was a beautiful unique specimen of humanity from the beginning that you couldn’t find fault with if you tried.  That’s what God thought anyway, because he let everybody know he was pretty pleased with him.  And since we’ve been talking about cars, here was as it were one model, which had just ran of the production line, that he’d been waiting for all his life, that he wanted to be seen in.  Sorted you would think, but then the unthinkable happened.  People wanted to do away with him and scrap him, can you believe that!  Why do away with a model that performs like no other ever performed?  But, this is where it gets interesting.  Because while being scrapped and about to expire and just before he was going to breathe his last breath and presumably never to be seen again, he shouted with a loud voice “It is finished!”

For a while the first Christians were flabbergasted.  They couldn’t fathom how something that’s scrapped could have accomplished anything.  But God he’s smart!  Hadn’t taken half measures.  Didn’t just catch two birds with one hand, he wanted all of them, the lot and not just them, I mean the whole lot, as in the whole world!  Had to, cause of everything that had fallen apart way back (see Genesis 3).  So when the time was right he got in there with his sleeves rolled up.  Singlehandedly, in his own inimitable way, went about putting things together again like the way they were before they started falling apart.  And in a case of ‘if you can’t beat them you have to join them’ really took it down to the wire, must give him that.  Was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.  Because there was no other man who was up to the job for this mission impossible.  For the situation was pretty dire.  A bit in the tradition of:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

No hope then for recovery you could say, it can’t be done!  But your name is not God if you can’t do some pretty incredible things.  He lives for moments like that!

Well, missions that are impossible need impossible heroes.  And heroes, they do what heroes do!  It’s a bit like with that ill-fated Apollo 13 mission that got stranded 335000 miles away in space after an explosion in 1970.  You know what, when disaster strikes, you don’t just wave a magic want and make it all happen.  The crew got to work on it like nobody’s business and they had to act fast.  One of the oxygen tanks was damaged and this meant they would soon run out of air.  Breathing filters had to be repaired and fast!  Parts were used from the service module that were not made for the command module.  Things had to be fixed with sticky backed plastic, fixing different types of filters together from different companies that sometimes didn’t fit the same holes.  They used plastic bags, duct tape and cardboard to make square filters fit round holes.  After many more ingenious repairs and no doubt some spine chilling moments, commander James Lovell, without the help of advanced computers, used nothing more than his notebook to do some complex mathematics to set out a new course to bring his crew safely home.  That involved the unorthodox method of navigating by the earth’s terminator, a clearly visible line on the planet that separates day from night.  They had to, because there was too much debris floating around from the explosion to get coordinates from the stars.  Finally the crew utilized the lunar module descend propulsion system to build up enough velocity.  Then they took the unusual step of going around the dark side of the moon and using the gravity of the moon to help them shoot back to earth in their command module.  At this stage the lunar module was dropped, which was not build to withstand the terminal velocity friction caused by entering earth’s atmosphere.  What had saved the situation is that all the ins and outs of the space craft were no mystery to the crew.  Just as well, because in situations like that you have no time to go on a three weeks refresher course.  You have to be familiar with everything before you even start.  You have to know your landing from your take off, your earth departure from your parking orbit, your oxygen tank 1 from your oxygen tank 2, your quantity readings from your stirring fans, your S-II engine from your S-IVB engine, your flight controllers from your support personnel.  It’s the skills, training and teamwork, but also the courage of the astronauts that got them through, together with the brilliant support of ground control down on earth.  These guys were pro’s!  They turned a disaster into a triumph of ingenuity and deservedly the Apollo 13 mission was called Nasa’s ‘most successful failure’.  It became a model for crisis management and teamwork in extra ordinary circumstances.

God is a pro too, all the ins and outs of that giant spaceship called earth were no mystery to him and he knew all the crew members by name too, past and future!  Better than anyone did he know how everything hangs together.  Had all come from his hands in the first place anyway.  Had measured the water in the hollow of his hand and with the breath of his hand marked off the heavens.  Held the dust of the earth in a basket and weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance (Isaiah 40:12).  He’d put the earth in its place, the heavens in their place and people in their place!  Anyways, to save the world you have to know your hammer from your chisel too, but also iniquity from righteousness, creation from creator, justification from sanctification, wrath from mercy, spiritual from carnal and how to make square pegs fit round holes.  So, he was able to understand all the universal mysteries, the lot.  Takes one to know one I guess!  No kidding, all the mysteries of space, of iniquity, of holiness and any other mystery are a doodle to him and he knows men like the back of his hand.  Did all his arithmetic too, doing off hand the most complex set of mathematical equations of a level that’s out of this world, faster than angel speed of course.  Did all his computations and imputations.  Mind you, this was absolutely not your average equation, time limits and criteria applied that were looked at from an eternal perspective.  Values had to be factored in based on where all the people are at, than there’s things like righteousness, justification, judgment, love, purpose, to name a few, and himself as the biggest factor of course, for nothing was gonna happen without him.  So a lot had to be taken into account, but in the final reckoning his figures were spot on.  And all hat expertise was brought to ahead in Christ, the captain of our salvation, who in his descent for mankind set out a new course that involved the unorthodox method of negotiating the dark side of men and then aiming for the Terminator that had plunged the whole earth into darkness.  But just like captain James lovell after him, Jesus knew he was only going to get one shot at!  And he was determined to go the distance to get the longest home run that ever was.  To let everyone touch down safely from whatever base there were on.  So, with just one last chance of winning, this would have to be the final victory for all forevers that there were ever going to be.  Failure was not on the cards, for that would mean end of game for everyone, with nothing to show for it. 

But what a captain he was!  Not only got in there with his sleeves rolled up, not only got his hands dirty.  But then, for all the failures of everyone that ever was, got treated like he did it even though he had done no wrong.  And got hurt doing it and crushed and buried like a criminal and then he showed the biggest heart you can imagine by not even complaining about it.  Seems what it says in Isaiah 53:

"He was crushed for our iniquities

Each of us has turned to his own way

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone

But he was buried like a criminal

Yet he did not open his mouth"

That’s got to be about Christ who died for the sins of the world, foretold of course.  Theologians have an interesting word for it, penal substitution.  Seems like an equation even I can understand.  Quite simply put: He took it for all of us, everyone else is of the hook, when accepted, God happy, we happy.

FAIRY TALE OR TRUTH

This is what someone said to me about the bible recently:

Quote: "But you can't believe in that nonsense, no matter how much you want to. For instance you can't believe that Santa Claus is real, or if you pray hard enough an apple will go up instead of fall on the ground. Because you have learned how gravity works and you know the story of Santa Claus. Only if you are ignorant like a little child, could you believe that sort of things. Knowledge has a lot to do with that, it restricts the domain of believable things. You would probably not believe that there was a man who build a wooden boat and in it put two of each kind of animals, while God let it rain for months and the whole earth became one big sea. With your mind you've gathered too much knowledge to believe a fairytale like that. So you give it a different interpretation, it is a symbolic story", end of Quote.

But it's not helpful if the yardstick that we use to evaluate truth, is reduced to only that which can be determined through our own observation and knowledge. Because God doesn't keep to boundaries that we set for what can be seen as possible or impossible within the framework of human thinking. Unfortunately the idea that something is only real if it can be explained through natural processes has been gaining in popularity. That viewpoint is often brought forward as being the best, if not the only way, to approach any and all problems. As if there is a monopoly on how we may interpret things, or what is the defining factor in coming to a conclusion about something. What doesn't conform to the rules of logical reasoning, or can't be verified experimentally, is at best seen as mere speculation or fantasy. In principle I actually agree with that. How else can lawyers, medical researchers, or any analysts do their job if they don't follow strict guidelines? But, in determining the credibility of the biblical stories, we mustn't overlook something very important. What we ourselves can reasonably observe and establish around us and in the greater universe and what we learn from that, doesn't tell us everything about what God can or can't do, or who he really is. Because what we observe is the creation, not God. Although the bible does say that the heavens declare his glory and the skies declare the work of his hands, Psalm 19:1.  And also that what may be known about God is made plain to people, for his invisible qualities, eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from his workmanship, Romans 1:20.  So, what may be known about him has been clearly seen and understood from what he's made.  It is presented as definitely not illogical for anybody to come to the conclusion that something so grand as the universe is the work of someone great.  At the same time it is also made clear that the creation is not God himself.  Perhaps it's a bit similar with for example a top of the range Ferrari, you don't see the people who made the car possible by looking at it.  What you do see is some of their amazing qualities shining through, like the design, craftsmanship, experience, technological know how and no doubt a good dose of enthusiasm that went into that splendid looking and powerfully performing machine.  Of course we do have the added advantage of knowing quite a lot about the experiential world of car designers/builders, for they are human beings like us.  But we don't fully know the experiential world of the maker of everything that is, for we see only what he has made and what that tells us about him. It's much more difficult to find out who God really is and everything he can or can't do. Unless he decides to reveal that to us and if there is a creator and we live in and only see his creation, then that's not an unreasonable line of thought. The bible is then not unreasonable either in what it sets out to do, meeting certain criteria, in that it tells us who God is, what he can or can't do and a lot of things about us, in great detail.  Perhaps making a universe should have been enough to convince even the staunchest critic that if he can do that, there's really nothing he can't do.  But in case we missed it, God took to getting his biography published.  And as if that wasn't enough, he did something completely new and came to us in Christ, filling us in on everything, reconciling the world to himself, letting us in on the grand design, his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 3:11.  

That taken into consideration, it's not always wise with the knowledge that we have, to give a different interpretation to certain biblical stories that don't fit in with our own experience or perception. To write them off as mere fairy tales that have only symbolic value. Personally I think it would have been more worrisome and less acceptable if some of the biblical stories didn't have an element of fairytaleishness in them. For any God worth his salt must at least be able to do things that are somewhat above the natural. To only do things that everyone else can do, then we could manage very well on our own couldn't we? But in the bible God says as it were "I can do things that you can't! I can put two of each kind of animal in a wooden boat built by a man. And nothing that goes on that boat shall be lost no matter how high the water comes!"

"Nonsense!" you might say, "that's just not possible!"

But if God couldn't do some fairytale stuff, than he couldn't have raised us from the death the moment we might have wanted to live a little longer, but couldn't because for us that's impossible. Not that it's only about that. Whoever is in Christ will not be lost, but he is not only the Savior that brings us to a safe haven. We also find in him the ultimate reason why we are here and a refuge to find help and support against all the things in life that sometimes are too much for us and that we often don't have an answer for. When we get to know Jesus in our life there is also an extraordinary peace that we can experience and enjoy, together with the love of Christ that passes all understanding. And you express that to the outside world too, for what is a love that you feel if your fellow human beings notice nothing of it. And that's what God is doing it for, because some of the miracles in the bible are nothing compared to what God can do in a human being, look at Jesus. And we? We, all of us, are destined and called, (if we want that), to be transformed to the image of the Son, ( to be like Jesus), that he would be the first born among many brothers, (and sisters), Romans 8:29. And what did Jesus say, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8)

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