Psalm 75: God’s Providence and the Aquinas Nature/Grace Divide

Psalm 75: God’s Providence and the Aquinas Nature/Grace Divide

Jan 7, 2023 | Culture

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As I’ve written here numerous times recently, our tendency is to see history and current events happening “by chance,” as if there is no guiding hand directing people and events, and things just happen. Maybe if there is any guiding hand it’s of a very bad pin ball wizard. But in fact, there is an Almighty guiding hand, the God we read about in our Bibles. We find it easy to believe He directed all things in redemptive history, but outside of the Bible we tend to see history and current events as atoms in the form of people just colliding willy-nilly ending up who knows where. But these words in Psalm 75 don’t allow that interpretation of what happens in our world:

6 Not from the east or the west
or from the desert comes exaltation.
7 It is God who judges:
He brings one down, he exalts another.

Think about the implications of this. Not a single individual goes up or down in the world apart from God’s will, and this means anywhere and everywhere in the world. We call this God’s providence.

I don’t believe this is only at the highest reaches of geopolitical power, like presidents or kings or prime ministers, but who gets the corner office, or becomes a store manager, or gets a job in the first place, or gets the gig with the band, or any number of infinite examples of human relationships. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Acts 17 speaking of God, “He gives all life and breath and everything else,” which is as comprehensive as it gets.

This is important for a variety of reasons, not least of which it is true. God is the sovereign ruler of all things. Most importantly, the entire meaning of history is God advancing his kingdom in Christ, and Christ building his church by the power of the Holy Spirit. This means nothing that happens in our lives (Rom. 8:28) or in the lives of anybody on earth, is insignificant. God is ordaining all that happens, literally every single thing every single second of every single day toward the ends of his choosing (i.e., the advance of His kingdom and the building of His church). I’m guilty at times, and I’m sure most Christians are, of seeing some things as “just happening,” as if they are outside of the telos of God’s designs in the ultimate redemption of the universe. Nothing happens by accident. Jesus uses a bird to make the point:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.

Some people rather than taking comfort from this fact of existence, struggle with trying to understand how God’s sovereign control of all things can coexist with man’s free will and accountability. This struggle has long and deep philosophical roots in Western history. I’ve never had a problem with it because I don’t feel the need to understand how both could be true at the same time because in the Bible they clearly are. We get into trouble when we think we either need to understand what is clearly a mystery of God’s being, or are owed such understanding.

But speaking of the deep philosophical roots, I’ve been listening to a podcast series on Thomas Aquinas from the Ezra Institute. It has helped me to further understand why people in Western secular culture struggle with or feel the need to understand God’s sovereignty vis a vis man’s free will. When I was a young Christian, I came across Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There and learned that Schaeffer was not a big fan of Aquinas. For Schaeffer, Aquinas was the turning point in Western intellectual history, and thus culture, because he tried to synthesize the philosophy of Aristotle with Christianity.

For a long time I’ve tried to understand why some Christians think this was a disaster for Western civilization, and others think it was a good thing. The guys at the Ezra Institute are definitely of the former, and I understand better now why. Simply, what happened was Aquinas created a higher order of things in grace, and a lower order in nature. What ends up happening is a kind of dualism where the upper story is for spiritual things, and the lower story “natural” things. Eventually in Western culture as it secularized, the upper story is either unknowable or only accessible via a “leap” of faith, and “real” knowledge is only available in the lower story or material world. The result was a slowly evolving secularism where God became persona non grata and religion a purely personal matter with no relevance to culture.

The challenge for Christians is that we’re programmed in this dualistic view of things just living in a secular Western culture, even if we know intellectually that God is Lord over all creation, every square inch of it. I often use the example I learned from C.S. Lewis who said that Mary’s virgin birth was just as miraculous as every birth. Prior to reading that several years ago I hadn’t realized how programmed I’d been into seeing certain things as “natural” and other things as super-natural. There is nothing “natural” about any birth, or anything in God’s created material reality.

The Bible doesn’t allow us any such distinction, and intellectually I knew that, but I was still influenced to see things that way. I no longer am. To fight against this secularist tendency one practical thing I do now is no longer refer to the created world as “nature.” When Western culture was thoroughly Christian using the word nature wouldn’t have been a problem because everyone agreed that meant God’s created material reality. But as the 19th century progressed, especially with the physics of Newton in full bloom and the idea of evolution percolating among intellectuals, nature soon came to mean “nature,” as in something in the lower story that runs all by itself. Nowadays if you hear or read a secular person use the word nature, it’s amazing what “nature” can do. Just replace that word with God, and there would be no difference.

In our day we should only refer to “nature” as creation because anytime the word nature is used in our secular culture the assumption is “acts on its own.” If we’re to be salt and light to our dark world, we have to be smart about how we use language and affirm our Creator God every chance we get. The fact of the matter is this, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . .”

If you like philosophy and this topic interests you, you can listen to the podcast here: Aquinas and the Nature/Grace Divide. It looks like there are nine total episodes, but the one I specifically linked to is about the topic of this post.

 

Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll

Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll

Jan 3, 2023 | Politics & Government, Uncategorized

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When we moved from Illinois to Florida in June 2017 one of the first things I noticed was how many cars had out-of-state license plates. It was remarkable. I’d never seen anything like it. What is even more remarkable is that it hasn’t changed! When my wife and I are driving together I’m always pointing out cars from everywhere but Florida. I don’t know if it’s been all 50 states, but if not it’s close. I’ve even seen Hawaii and Alaska! I learned at one of our county GOP meetings earlier this year that 1,100 people a day are moving to Florida, and something like 80 percent are moving to the greater Tampa Bay area where we live. It’s funny to hear the locals complain about the annoyances that come from a growing population, but I was born and raised in southern California, and we lived in the Chicago area for 17 years, so the crowds don’t bother me so much.

There is, however, something to be learned from this phenomenon that speaks to the dynamics of the times in which we live. I came across this piece that most Americans know is a fact even if they don’t know much: “Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll.” Here are a some takeaways from the report:

Even with possible fudging, the Census Bureau’s latest interim report shows that Blue states are losing population while Red states are gaining population.

As in the old divide between Communist East Germany and the free West Germany created by Konrad Adenauer after World War II, people migrate towards freedom. In the wake of the great Wuhan Pandemic lockdowns, it is no surprise that more people chose to move. Unlike Germany, there is no wall to prevent internal migration within the United States toward freer states.

The South is now the largest population area in the U.S. The Northeast and Midwest lost population “due to negative net domestic migration.”

Both Red and Blue states appear to be doubling down on their governing strategies. Red states are increasing job opportunities, while Blue states look increasingly to the federal government to bail them out of the mess caused by fleeing taxpayers.

Over the last five years many told me these people coming from blue states like California and New York were going to turn red states blue. Nope! I intuitively knew that wasn’t the case given the reasons we left Illinois, in addition to the weather, had to do with the Democrat dysfunction in Illinois. And this was when Florida was still considered a “tossup” state and could go either way. Had 30,000 people voted differently for governor in 2018, Ron DeSantis would not have been governor and Florida would have turned into a Covid hellhole like other blue states. Thank God it didn’t!

Since we moved here I heard about the growing Republican registration advantage over Democrats which proved my intuition was correct. As you can see from the chart, when we moved here the Democrats had a 250,000 plus advantage, now it’s Republicans 350,000 plus! That is amazing, and speaks to the genius of the Founding Fathers of the great American republic (it is not a Democracy).

Given the challenging times in which we live it’s easy to be a David Doomer or Negative Nellie or Debbie Downer. It often appears all lemons with no lemonade, glass definitely half empty, if that. I choose not to see things that way because of God’s providence, and that America’s founding and blessings are not an accident. All of America’s Founders and the founding generation, even those many claim were Deists, believed America’s birth was ultimately God’s doing. It was absurd anyone could possibly think these poor little colonies could be any match for the mighty British Empire. In a book I recently read, The Indispensables, this mindset was put well:

“The madmen of Marblehead are preparing for an early campaign against his Majesty’s troops,” scoffed a Loyalist newspaper in early 1774, skeptical of the idea that Americans could threaten the most experienced and skillful military professionals on the planet at the time.

We tend to look back at America’s founding as inevitable, but it only was in God’s mind. From a human perspective it looked impossible. For this reason the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence thought they were very likely signing their death warrant. Benjamin Franklin captured the frightening reality of the moment with his statement on the signing, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately”

But they didn’t hang, and via that Declaration and the Constitution in 1787 gave us the most incredible experiment in republican government in the history of the world. In effect, the red migration is a continuation of that experiment that I believe will allow it to continue for generations to come. Doomers think I’m nuts and it’s already over given what’s happened in the last two years, but I very much beg to differ.

There are many reasons for my optimism, but one is the nature of the republic the Founders created seen in this red migration. The concept known as federalism gives Americans an escape valve. The way such a valve works in a container is when pressure builds up to a dangerous level (as in a steam boiler) it opens automatically to let out steam; the states are that escape valve.

The struggle at the founding of America was how to get 13 separate sovereign colonies to unite to form one government. Some founders wanted a stronger central government, and others stronger state governments. The latter group was more influential initially given how skeptical all the founders were about centralized power in government, and the first governing document of the United States of America, the Articles of Confederation reflected that. Adopted in November 1777, it proved to not work very well in practice. This gave the Federalists the leverage to create a new constitution with a stronger Federal governement which was ratified on September 17, 1787.

States for most of American history had a large measure of sovereign power, but over time as the Federal government grew states allowed their constitutional prerogatives to languish. Thankfully, what the Founders created still works pretty much as intended, and as the Federal Leviathan has become increasingly tyrannical, people in blue states are not putting up with it. Even red areas of blue states have gotten fed up and are voting to succeed from those states.

Back in the ‘80s during the Reagan era a line became famous among conservatives: Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry. No matter how much misery and destruction progressive leftist policies create progressive leftists double down and push more such policies. It seems tens of millions of Americans have had enough of it and are voting with their feet. Thankfully that makes it much less likely they’ll have to “vote” with their guns.

 

Psalm 73: When I Tried to Understand All This . . . Circumstances People

Psalm 73: When I Tried to Understand All This . . . Circumstances People

Dec 28, 2022 | Gratitude, Theology

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Christians love the Psalms because we can relate to how they portray the messiness of life in a fallen world, and Psalm 73 is one of the most relatable. It starts with the fundamental Christian perspective on all things:

 1 Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

Our sinful tendency when things go south is to wonder if God has it out for us. In the novel The Magnificent Ambersons, the protagonist is having an especially tough day: “After that, the whole world seemed to be one solid conspiracy of malevolence.” Who hasn’t felt like this at times! The much younger me often threw a pity party for me, myself and I, but nobody seemed interested in joining the party. I’ve taught my kids all their lives, and still do, that nobody cares how we feel; they care about how they feel. It’s best to keep whatever those feelings are between me and God, and a few close loved ones.

I hate to confess this for all the world to see, but it wasn’t until I got into my 40s that I was able to effectively counter the natural inclination to victimhood in my sinful heart. It took me a long time and much misery to realize God is good to his people (Israel), i.e., me, no matter what the circumstances look like. God’s goodness is not a function of our assessment of circumstances, as if from our limited perspective and knowledge we can assess the ultimate goodness of anything. It wasn’t too many years ago, five to be exact (September of 2017 to be even more exact) that I prayed to God something like, “It would be ideal if . . . “ And one day as I was praying I heard God say to me, almost audibly, “What a moron! How would you know what ‘ideal’ is?” Good question. Only God knows ideal, and that eternally. I now pray what I think I want, but always in the context of, “Thy will be done,” God’s good, pleasing and perfect will in Christ.”

Paul in I Thessalonians 5:17 commands us to give thanks in all circumstances because having a grateful perspective on things “is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus” (compare Eph. 5:20, always and for everything doesn’t leave us any wiggle room). By giving God thanks we acknowledge his goodness and sovereign power over all things, and in Christ means we are all in his eyes “pure in heart.” Romans 8:28 is the ultimate truth of our lives. Paul says we know, not think or hope or wonder, but “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

This doesn’t mean the knowing through all the vagaries, vicissitudes, pain, and suffering of life will be easy. Nothing is easy! But it gives our lives a hope and purpose and stability the circumstances people can never have, Christians or not.

The question is will we live by sight or by faith, i.e., by circumstances or trusting God. The Psalmist, Asaph, rooted in knowing the goodness of God, still struggled because life is, well, life:

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Living by sight he almost lost it, but only almost because he didn’t let the circumstances determine whether God was good, or not. He was even tempted to believe obedience to God was worthless:

13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
and have washed my hands in innocence.

But he knew that would be a betrayal to God’s people (v. 15), yet he still made the fatal mistake all sinners make:

16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me.

It’s insane to think we can understand God and his ways, as if comprehending the nature of God is more important than trusting him. Trusting him is what it’s all about. If we make this mistake it creates, in the Hebrew, trouble, labor, or toil. In other words, trying to figure out God is a miserable way to live. Asaph didn’t quite understand this until he realized God is God, and we are not:

17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

Only when we look to the place where God dwells, understand who he is in all his glory and goodness and power, will we understand who we really are, and the destiny of those who belong to him, and those who do not. Otherwise, we will be senseless and ignorant, a brute beast before God (v. 22). The “secret” to a truly fulfilling life is as easy as it is hard:

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And being with you I desire nothing on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

It’s either this, or we will be circumstances people.

You May Say to Yourself . . .

You May Say to Yourself . . .

Dec 26, 2022 | Culture

What is the first thing that came into your mind when you read the title of this post? Before I answer about mine, one of my sons is reading through the Bible and recently came to me with a quote from Deuteronomy 8:

17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

He said it was profound, which of course gave me the opportunity to expand on the profundity as is my wont; my wife and kids have had to endure these lectures for decades.

The beauty of Christianity, and Judaism for those who take the faith of their fathers seriously, is that when life is properly understood our accomplishments, including the money we make, leads to humility not pride or arrogance. Any clear-thinking secularist would have to admit their wealth and success included depending on many people without whom their accomplishments would be impossible. Yet without knowing a personal God who in Paul’s words gives all people “life and breath and everything else,” a deep humility in gratitude to God for his blessings is not possible. Everything is better, tastier, better sounding, more beautiful, more gratifying, etc., knowing it comes from the gracious hand of our Creator God.

About the verses, the reason wealth was so important to the Hebrews and the Jews as they came to be called during the Babylonian exile was because of these verses, among others. Wealth was a sign to them of God’s covenant faithfulness, a blessing that confirmed God’s love for them. Jesus changed that equation a bit, but there is nothing glorious or virtuous about poverty. God wants us to create wealth, and as we strive and struggle to earn a living (by painful toil and the sweat of our brow always fighting thorns and thistles), we must always understand through the process of learning and growing that it is the Lord our God who gives us the ability to produce wealth. Knowing that we can be grateful and generous, blessing others with what God has so richly provided.

On to the words. As soon as they came out of my son’s mouth I thought of the song by the Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime.” Now I can’t get it out of my head! As we listened to it, I decided to look at the lyrics and discovered it is Nihilistic in a quirky Talking Heads kind of way. David Byrne is an odd fellow and their songs are like that, quirky if not all quite as Nihilistic. This song just happened to be a perfect contrast to the truth of the Deuteronomy verses and why they lead to mutually exclusive places.

The Talking heads version of reality is quintessential secularism where God, if he’s even there, isn’t relevant to everyday life. Our lives are basically a mystery, so he starts with, “And you may find yourself . . .” As you look at the strangeness that is your life you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” Who knows!

It seems life in Byrne world has something to do with the vagaries and mystery of water, while things are and always will be, “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” We must remember “Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us,” and we just let the days go by, same stuff, but “Here a twister comes, here comes the twister.” And we all know twisters just happen for no rhyme or reason.

The song captures so well the hopelessness of secular life without the living God in Christ. It shouldn’t surprise us that in a culture awash in secularism even though it’s the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world, over 40,000 (45,979 in 2020 to be exact) people a year in America kill themselves, and many more try. Life in secular Byrne world will do that to people who try to live without any ultimate hope. I’m reading through the Psalms now, and as I’m writing this I just came across these words of David in Psalm 63. The contrast to secular Byrne world could not be any greater:

You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

Our secular neighbors need this God desperately, and I pray God gives us all opportunities to share him with those who know they have needs nothing in this world can ultimately fulfill.

 

 

Let’s Not Forget: Christmas is About Easter

Let’s Not Forget: Christmas is About Easter

Dec 24, 2022 | The Gospel

Given how big the celebration of Christmas is compared to Easter, it might come as a surprise that for much of Christian history it wasn’t celebrated at all. One reason is the gospels where only two address Jesus’ birth, but all four his death. There is no indication that Jesus’s birth should be celebrated, but specific teaching (including Paul in I Cor. 11) by Jesus himself (e.g., Matt. 26) that his death should be. So it isn’t surprising it took three hundred years before his birth would be celebrated.

During those centuries the church didn’t think the incarnation was holiday (in the literal meaning of the term, holy day) material. At this time of year they celebrated the feast of Epiphany which is where the idea of the twelve days of Christmas comes from. We know this as the three kings, the Magi, visiting Christ (which probably happened when he was two years old) symbolizing that salvation was for all people. In those centuries of the church, births were not celebrated by Christians, rather it was the death or martyrdom of saints that was celebrated because of the death and resurrection of the Savior of the world.

As the centuries went on, some early church fathers thought the day of Christ’s birth should be celebrated, and “December 25, 336, marks the day Christians officially celebrated the first Christmas on Earth.” We know pagans in those early centuries had mid-winter celebrations in December, December 25 being specifically the day of “natalis solis invict” (the Roman birth of the unconquered sun), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness.” But when the Roman Empire became officially Christian, the church decided to appropriate these holidays for Christianity. In fact, Augustine (354-430) wrote, “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it.” Is that beautiful or what!

There was a fourth century Bishop named Saint Nicholas, but it was a very long time before he became associated with Christmas and Santa Clause. It’s a fascinating history how the celebration of a generous saint became connected with jolly Old Saint Nick that slowly became Santa and the holiday we celebrate. It developed in the 19th century with a significant push from Charles Dickens who wrote A Christmas Carol 1843 and took his show on the road reading it to packed houses in America in the coming decades. (I learned a movie came out in 2017 called The Man Who Invented Christmas, which I am looking forward to watching this Christmas season.)

J. Gresham Machen, one of the great saints of the church (1881-1937) just five days before his death gave a radio address about the atonement. In it he expresses his gratitude about the celebration of Christmas:

[T]hank God for the Christmas season; thank God for the softening that it brings to stony hearts; thank God for the recognition that it brings for the little children whom Jesus took into His arms; thank God even for the strange, sweet sadness that it brings to us together with its joys, as we think of the loved ones who are gone. Yes, it is well that we should celebrate the Christmas season; and may God ever give us a childlike heart that we may celebrate it aright.

Then he discusses the contrast in the New Testament related to Christ’s birth and death, and why that contrast exists:

I think the answer is fairly clear. The birth of Jesus was important not in itself but because it made possible His death. Jesus came into this world to die, and it is to His death that the sinner turns when He seeks salvation for his soul.

This Christmas season as we give gifts with loved ones, let us remember the greatest gift was God becoming man to die in our place to reconcile himself to his people. He was given the name Jesus before he was born specifically for that reason because as Joseph was told, “he will save his people from their sins.”