God of Men

The terrifying truth is this: if we allow ourselves to think of the things that men do as miracles, then it is not long at all before we need no God at all. 

Follow this - God used to do all kinds of incredible miracles in His Word. The blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard, the water was turned into wine. There was no doubt in anyone's minds that these were acts of God and that God was, indeed, Creator of All. He had to be, for only a Creator could re-create the world in such ways as to heal its brokennesses.

Today, we say that modern medicine, fashioned by men, is a miracle. We say that human perseverance is a miracle. We say that the things that men do are miracles, and that this is how God works His miracles today. Let's just assume for a minute that that is true (it's not, but let's assume that it is). The God that works these "miracles" doesn't have to be the Creator of anything; He just has to be the puller of men's strings. He's not an artist; He's a puppetmaster. 

That's far less than He tells us that He is. 

But that's all it takes for these "miracles." God doesn't have to break any metaphysical barriers. He doesn't have to re-create a fallen world. All He has to do is get men to do things according to His Will, and we'll call Him miraculous. 

Never mind that this is the very same God who gave us free will because He didn't want puppets; He wanted friends. 

Now, we take this God who is the God of men, and it doesn't take long before we stop seeing Him involved even with men. After all, if men are the ones working the miracles, then it doesn't really matter how or why. Some might continue to give credit to God, but we think that's probably just a nice sentiment. Instead, we're focused on how they actually did what they did, and we come to believe in all kinds of things like human ingenuity, human grit, or human reason. Notice something about these things? 

They're all human. No need for God at all. Why should there be?

You see, once we stop needing God to be the Creator of the universe in order to be God at all, we start to lose Him, and it doesn't take long before we let go altogether and fall into the abyss of human arrogance, human pride. It's the same sin His people have always committed, but to a far more dastardly degree. For much of their history, men have attempted to say that they do not need God because they have no need of a Creator of the universe. 

Today, men say that they do not need God because they have created the universe themselves. 

Don't you see how we got here? It's with ideas like these. It's with this slow creeping of our theology from God as He has revealed Himself to God as we acknowledge Him. It's with this subtle, slow shift by where we stop letting God tell us who He is and start telling Him who He is. It's with this rebellion where we stop listening to our creation in His image and start creating in our own image. And for awhile, we still call it sacred, but that doesn't last. It doesn't take long before we just start calling it "real." Whatever that means. 

Which is why we have to be careful, especially as Christians, not to fall into this trap. We have to insist that God is much more than just the God of men, the God who pulls our strings so that we do good and beautiful things in this world. Sometimes, by grace, we do good and beautiful things, and it's pretty cool.

But God is the One who does good and beautiful things in this world all on His own, consistently so. And it's miraculous.

By Faith

It's easy to lose sight of the miraculous in a world in which some really cool things are happening every day - things like the blind seeing, the lame walking, the single mother toughing it out.

It's easy to lose sight of because when we see these things like happened in the Gospels, it's always because they are attached to some machine made by man. When we see a widow giving her last two mites, then still having enough, we say it's because she gave, not because God gave back to her. When we pour out the oil and it keeps coming, we say what a wonderful thing we have done, creating an ever-flowing fountain. And so it's easy to say that that God must be doing the miraculous these days through us.

But that is a dangerous and empty theology. It cheapens our faith and lessens our God if we simply believe that every good thing that happens in this world is a "miracle."

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, God told us from the very beginning that this world is good. He's never given up on that. Yet we say that anything good must be miraculous. That just can't be the case. Everything good is as God intended it to be. The more we say that good must be a miracle, the more we deny that creation is inherently good. And we forget what God created it to be.

Second, we simply cannot confuse the "pretty cool" with the "miraculous." Both have their place in Scripture, but they are vastly different places. "Miraculous" things happen because of a divine act of God that breaks through the metaphysical barriers of the created world and reorders something on the spot. "Miraculous" things happen because God decides that they should happen, and then God does them.

"Pretty cool" things happen because of the faith of men (and women) who are obedient to God's calling on their lives. "Pretty cool" things happen because we decide that we're going to buy into what God is doing, and we jump on board His plan.

It is in this second category that we must put the marvels of modern medicine and the other "pretty cool" things that we see every day in our world.

We don't have robotic legs to help the paralyzed walk because of some miracle, because God miraculously put it into some guy's mind and poof! There it was. We know because when God sets the lame to walking, they jump right up and pick up their mats. No robotic legs necessary. But we have robotic legs because God endowed some created creative mind to develop them, and that mind, in obedience, did what God had created it to do and offered this gift back to humanity. It's pretty cool, but it's not a miracle.

The blind are not walking around seeing because God miraculously healed them through advanced science. When God miraculously heals a blind man, the scales fall off His eyes. We...have to go in and cut those scales away. It's pretty cool, but it's not a miracle. It's made possible not because God broke through the metaphysical barriers of creation and made it possible, but because He inspired one of His created creatives to figure it out. And that created creative did, and then gave it back to humanity.

Look through the Scriptures. The Scriptures are full of both the miraculous and the pretty cool, but these are fundamentally different things. Pretty cool things are happening all the time because men and women choose to obey God, to follow His calling, and to participate in His plan. Miraculous things also happen, but these are because God chooses to burst onto the scene and make them happen.

Sometimes, of course, the miraculous happens because of the pretty cool. Take, for example, the opening of Paul's eyes. Paul, in obedience, goes to Ananias; Ananias, in obedience, places his hands on Paul. Both men are part of this really cool moment in which God is on full display. Then God, on full display, does the miraculous - restores sight to the blind. Ananias didn't give Paul his sight back; both men would tell you that plainly.

On the contrary, look at the way we respond to some of the headlines, even those of us who live by faith in this world. A man is in a terrible car accident and is paralyzed, begins to walk again with the help of artificial legs, and then he declares to the world that God miraculously gave him these incredible artificial legs in order to heal him.

Since when has God ever given anyone an artificial anything? That's not a miracle. It's pretty cool, but it's not a miracle. If it were a miracle, the man would have jumped up out of his hospital bed, tossed that little backless gown on the bed, and danced on out the door, proclaiming, "Byeeeeeee!"

See, the real danger here is not that we might fail to credit God for the pretty cool things that are happening. The real danger is that we eventually fail to require Him for the miraculous.

If the things that men are doing are "miracles," then it's just a matter of time before we no longer even need to acknowledge that men have done them by the power and gift of God. Men become our gods, since they are the ones doing the miracles.

And God? Well, God doesn't have to be anything special at all if we are satisfied to say that what men do is miraculous, even if it is so by the power of God. God is required only to be the God of men, not the God of creation. And once we make Him merely the God of men, we have lost something fundamental about Him.

More on that tomorrow.

On Miracles

There is no shortage of miracles in the Bible. In fact, as we've been looking at through the lens of healings in the Gospels, God's ability to do the miraculous is one of the primary reasons that persons, historically, turned to Him. 

Not so much any more, and I wonder if part of the reason for that is because we have lost our sense of what a miracle truly is.

This topic actually comes up a lot, even when persons are hesitant to use the word "miracle." Instead, they often say something like "what God does" or "God doing something." But not a miraculous something. Just a something. And an overwhelming voice within the Christian community has concluded that what God is doing today, He is doing more quietly than He did in the Bible.

God's "miracles" of today are clothed, they say, in modern medicine. Or in human grit. Or in some other kind of cloth where we would not quite recognize them if we did not believe that they were given by God's hand. 

They say, for example, that chemotherapy is a miracle. That God has enabled men to discover, create, modify, and utilize this incredible medicine that holds cancer at bay, at least for a little while, and even sends some scampering away for good. Which might be a miracle, I guess, unless you happen to be one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of persons for whom chemotherapy is not effective. Then, well...some miracle.

They say that it is a miracle that a single mother holds on and makes it through, raising good kids on her minimum-wage (or below-minimum-wage) waitressing job. That God has enabled her not to give up, but to find some reservoir of strength that pushes her through, no matter how hard her circumstances press in on her. Which might be a miracle, I guess, unless you happen to be one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of single mothers who doesn't make it through, whose children are taken away, whose apartment is rented out from under her. Then, well...some miracle. 

They say that it is a miracle that some kids finish high school at all, that some persons find love in this world, that the store happens to have one last item on the shelf that you were looking for when you were looking for it. They say that it's a miracle when you open your wallet and have just enough cash or when you forget to pick something up and come home only to find that you didn't really need it anyway.

They say, because they don't know what else to say, that God's miracles today are these quiet kinds of things, these everyday kinds of things that you'd have to know God to know that He was doing them.

And I say, well...some miracle.

There are a lot of problems, both theologically and practically, with thinking of these kinds of things as miracles. Serious problems. 

That doesn't mean - hear me now - that doesn't mean that these are not beautiful things. That doesn't mean that they are not incredible, wonderful things. That doesn't mean that they don't have God's hand all over them, that they have not been scrawled in His own handwriting. It doesn't mean that at all. 

It only means they are not miracles, and if we settle for thinking that they are, we are selling God short. Way short. 

It's no wonder we're not hearing the kinds of stories the Gospels are full of. We don't need them. 

We're perfectly content with far, far less. 

Black Friday

Today is Black Friday, the day on which (as a number of memes accurately point out) Americans who were just yesterday thankful for all that they had rush out to greedily snatch up all that they can at incredible prices.

In all of the promotion and excitement and planning and scheming, most Americans have forgotten why this day is what it is. Most American don't know why it is called Black Friday. It doesn't even occur to them that this day was created not for them, but for the retailers - so-called Black because today is the day when the retailers balance their books and finally turn a profit for the year. 

But don't think for a moment that this is a post about American economics. Far from it. 

This is a post about the human heart.

Because what we've done with Black Friday is what we've done with just about everything else, including matters of faith and the heart and God and church and all that. The longer it's gone on, the longer we've participated in these kinds of things, the longer we've made them part of our routine, the more we have come to believe that they are all about us. 

When we go to church, let's just be honest, most of us are thinking about ourselves. We're thinking about what we get out of it. We're thinking about all that it means for us to be there. 

We're thinking about being part of a social club that gives us a certain measure of standing in our communities or looks good on our resumes or teaches us the insider lingo of some kind of elite group. We're thinking about the programs that are available to us and our children, just by being a part of it, and we celebrate things like preschool, Sunday school, and youth group that help us to raise our kids. We think about the worship that just sounds so good, the preaching that makes us feel good about ourselves, and the connections we make with other human beings that give us a resource to call upon when we need one.

When we think about God, we think about everything that we get out of Him. We think about how our sins (you know, those very few sins that we actually have, in comparison with so many others who sin more than we do and in full acknowledgement that God probably doesn't even care any more about most of our sins) and how they are forgiven. We think about how we get the chance to say some beautiful things because God taught them to us. We think about how we get this awesome opportunity to go to Heaven just because we go to church. And so on and so on and so on...

And some of this is good, I guess, or whatever. But it reveals something about the nature of our hearts as human beings, says something fundamental about who we are. 

Because just as we have lost sight of how Black Friday was created for the retailers, so, too, have we forgotten that faith was made for God.

We've forgotten how much God loves our presence in His assembly, how He rejoices over us when we come to Him. We've forgotten how much God loves breaking bread with us in Communion, how He is the One who instituted this sacrament in the first place. We've forgotten that when we worship, God loves the sounds of our voices even more than we do - even the voices that sing off-key. We have forgotten how God celebrates when His Word is proclaimed. 

We have gone to church to declare how much we love God, but we have forgotten somewhere just how much He loves us. We don't even give it a second thought.

Today, as happens every year on this day, many Americans will rush out and scoop up bargains that they think were made just for them, forgetting that today is a day for retailers who have set their eyes on the black. 

And then, on Sunday, as happens every Sunday, many Americans will straggle into church services that they think were made just for them, forgetting that Sunday (and all other days) is a day for God who poured Himself out in the red. 

Thankful

Today is a day where we in America pause to give thanks. For weeks, many of us have been talking about what we are thankful for, counting our blessings and naming all of the beautiful things in our lives. 

But that's not really what thankfulness is. 

Thankfulness is not a reaction that we should have to the circumstances or contents or contexts of our lives. It is not something we do in response to what this world, this life, or even our God, does for us. It is not a propositional exchange. 

Faithfulness is a state of being. 

It's this thing that comes welling up from somewhere deep inside of you, and it's as unshakable as the depth of your faith. It's just natural, it's the kind of thing that you'd have to either try really hard not to be or just neglect long enough that you forget that it's there. 

The very concept is difficult. It's hard because we spend so much of our lives in comparative thanks. On our best days, we're told we ought to be thankful that we have good days like these because others don't, and on our worst days, we're reminded to be thankful because others are having days much worse than ours. And we have learned to judge our thanks by what we have and what others don't have and what life looks like through just the right lens. 

That's not thankfulness. It's arrogance. It's doing whatever we have to do to think more highly of ourselves, then being thankful for the view from up here. 

When we read the Scriptures, there is certainly a theme of thanksgiving. God calls His people to live thankful lives. But not once does He tell them what they should be thankful for. Not once.

Not once does He say, "Be thankful, for you have it better than all the other nations. Be thankful, for I am your God and that's really good for you. Be thankful, for the land has produced great fruit this year for you. Be thankful, for you have enough on your table and your neighbor doesn't." It's not the way God goes about it. He just says we should be thankful. Not "for" anything, but because thankfulness is at the very core of who we are;

it is part of awe.

That's hard, I know. It's hard because it's so difficult to put into words that anyone can understand unless they already know it. But just because it's hard doesn't mean we tuck it away and settle for something less; this is essential. This is the very essence of who we are.

Thankfulness is part of that smallness that we feel when we stand in the greatness of God and His creation. It's part of the way that our hearts tingle a bit under the night sky, a million stars lit up over us and we, so big in our own britches, just a speck. It's part of that humility that just sort of settles in us when we realize that what we're doing is so much bigger than us, or when we read the pages of God's story and know that He's still writing it right now, with our names penciled in. It's part of that overwhelming sense that just drives us to our knees before the altar. Thankfulness is so much a part of the core of our very creation. We shouldn't have to be reminded to be thankful. We are thankful, by God's own design.

We just have to remember it. 

So today, as we gather...as we count our blessings and name all the beautiful things in our lives, let thankfulness be one of those beautiful things. Let it radiate through your entire being, permeate down to the depths of your core. Let that thread of thanksgiving that runs through all of creation weave its way through your very soul. 

There won't be words to speak. At least, I've never found any. But it's this most incredible feeling. For a moment, for just a moment, in real thankfulness, we touch Eden.