Adulthood

Recently I have been reading a book called "The God Who is There" by  Francis Shaeffer. It talks about some of the philosophical trends that have happened in the last century that have to do with denial of absolute truth in the like. In it, he mentions two French philosophers who talked about self actualisation (I forget who they were). Basically, to self actualise, you just have to do an action. You have to make a choice - so helping a lady cross the street would be no more or less valid than beating her up and stealing her bag.

Simultaneously I have been coming across a lot of material (blogs, sermons, and, who knew, a complete recording available for free online of C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" - gold) which have been talking about adulthood or maturity in the faith and the journey onward to salvation.

The theme of a lot of it has been something clearly biblical, yet which I think many mainstream theologians have either overlooked or downplayed. I have heard it a lot from those who would be considered "heterodox" - like Greg Boyd (highly recommend looking him up) and Rob Bell. It is the idea that the New Creation that will happen when Jesus returns is a certain type of place. In this life we are trying to practise and exercise our wills so that our characters will transform more and more into the type of character that can exist in a place like that.

This is a really cool way of thinking about life here, and it also gives me a context in which to understand the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox idea of "work's" role in salvation - this character transformation happens only through our exercises of will and the actions big and small that we carry out each and every day. So even though we are justified through grace alone, our "salvation" in the sense of becoming completely free from sin and surrendered to God, does happen through works.

So why have I called this post adulthood. Well, it occurred to me that the real and true way of "self actualisation" is, paradoxically, to give the self more and more over to the will of God. In the words of John the Baptist "I must decrease, He must increase."

God is calling me, and all of us, to adulthood. To self actualisation by submitting our will more and more to Him. To growing up into the character that will be made completely ours in the new creation - and thankfully by His grace, we can do this without feeling we have to prove ourselves or justify ourselves. Little by little, we can practise, and change, and grow.

Mike Licona

OK so this guy Mike Licona has written a book about the resurrection, I haven't read it yet but it sounds great (edit: I read it. It's great. But it is a little heavy going). It is called The Resurrection of Jesus. I have been reading around the issue, because he apparently has been getting heaps of flac from some evangelicals. Here is an article about it for you to read. If you don't want to read it, the upshot is that this guy Licona is basically being called on to recant by a couple of other Christians because although he has written a 700 page tome about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he suggested that the part in Matthew where a bunch of other dead people rise and appear in Jerusalem may not be true. They say he is denying inerrancy by saying this.

Here are my ranty thoughts on this controversy that I posted on another blog in the comments section. It is pretty ranty, but hopefully it makes some sort of sense, because to me, if the presence of some error or myth in the bible, still doesn't detract from the good evidence of Jesus' resurrection, then that is some pretty damn good evidence we've got.

It seems like Licona is saying that *even though* there is a possibility that the gospels contain myth, *even though* they are written in the style of greco-roman biographies, and so it is hard to tell where fact ends and myth starts, the available evidence *still* points very strongly to the fact that Jesus lived, died, and rose again! How ridiculously compelling is that? That is so incredibly heartening to me.

What is more convincing, someone saying to you, “There were angels at the tomb, many rose when Jesus did, and the resurrection of Jesus is true. I know all this things because the bible says them.”
OR, someone saying “I’ve looked at the evidence for these three things. The first two seem like they *may* have elements of mythology and may not have really happened. But from what I can see, the third one pretty much definitely happened.”

That’s incredible! That kind of biblical scholarship should have people jumping up and down in excitement: though they may deny the presence of angels, though they may deny many biblical events, *even skeptics* cannot deny the strong probability that Jesus *actually* rose from the dead.
I just can’t stop ranting about how incredible that is. I can’t believe any Christian would tear someone down for saying that. If that isn’t a compelling argument for Christianity, nothing is. It’s certainly better than saying “the bible is inerrant so everything in it is true. How do we know it’s inerrant? Oh, because it says in there that it’s inerrant. Since it’s inerrant, we must believe what it says about itself being inerrant.”

The Parable of the Geraniums

I was out watering my garden this morning and I found a flower on one of my geranium plants.

This is interesting because I originally had two geranium plants, one of them I planted in pretty shallow soil and the other one in deep soil. The first geranium plant bore lots of flowers after about two days. I was overjoyed, but puzzled as to why the other geranium didn't have any. The flowers lasted for another couple of days and then died. This geranium has slowly been dying ever since. Now there are a few green leaves on it but most of them are brown and its stalk is all withered.

The second geranium just sat there for weeks. Its leaves were still green so I knew it was alive but it didn't seem to be thriving. Its leaves were sort of slightly curled up and it was... well... just sitting there.

But today, at least a month later, probably more like two months, it finally has a single flower, and still looks happy and green.

This reminded me in a really concrete way of Jesus' similar parable. And it made me realise the point of that comparison - it's not actually a good thing to do lots of good stuff and look like you're doing really well straight away. If you bury yourself deep in the soil of God's love and His word, then the fruit will come.
But you have to be patient. It won't come straight away, and you might only get one change at a time.

I find this so comforting because it makes me realise how true Jesus saying was "my yoke is easy and my burden is light." I mean seriously - ALL we have to do is revel in God's love? We don't actually have to work changes in those impossible areas ourselves?
I also find it comforting because it shows me that sometimes there might be times in our lives where we feel like we are not bearing much fruit. But that doesn't mean we're "backsliding". A church I used to attend used to tell us that if you aren't moving forward in God, then you're backsliding. You can't just stand still. And I understand what they mean but at the same time that idea can cause lots of anxiety if it's taken wrongly (or presented wrongly).
Sometimes you might feel like you are at a standstill. But if we rest deep in God's love we will never stop bearing fruit.

Paradoxes Are Cool

We approach the truth from many sides. Some may appear to contradict each other - like two waves travelling in opposite directions.
The waves hit, collide, and send up a spike of water that transcends all our approximations and reaches the pinnacle of the truth.
Even if we cannot ourselves ever imagine these high truths, our approximations, our labels, our descriptions, our wrestling with the paradox, all point us towards them and enable us to grasp them just that little bit more with our minds.

Paradoxes lead us further into God's mystery.
That's why they're cool.

Unfortunately what normally happens is the second scenario - our views appear contradictory, so we kill each other. I've used pretty contradictory views but it even happens with paradoxical disputes within monotheism, and even within Christianity.
But I think it's happening less and that's positive.

Aliens Make Crop Circles.

So this is a lame joke I came up with a few years ago. I have no idea whether aliens really do make crop circles. Crop circles are really cool though, there's some crazy ones out there.

The farmers are saying "Whaddya reckon? Aliens?" "Naw, just some kid with a rope and plank..."