A Word to the World - A Tiny Compendium

A Word to the World: Nothing is more deleterious to human relations than humans themselves. Nothing damages human spirits more than does human heartlessness. Nothing ruins relationships more than does frivolous human speech. Nothing imperils human survival more than humanity's own cold-hearted egocentricity. Nothing has killed more humans than humans themselves.

A Word to the World: We global humans are exquisitely intelligent and diverse creatures but appallingly we have such ingenuous parochial worldviews that we cannot grasp that we are ONE remarkable, intelligent human genus of biped being, each of whom deserves identical respect and compassion.

WORSHIP IN THE TRUEST SENSE

Worship, within the culture of the present church, comes down to, how well did certain performers do during a specific period of time on Sunday. Worship in the minds of many churchgoers is understood as that which certain people with certain skills do, even when what they do is designed to involve churchgoers. Worship is then evaluated in terms of how well the worship time was planned, how singable and intelligible were the songs that were chosen, how well the musicians played and sang and appeared, and how well the preacher communicated.

Worship is different from that and so much more than that when scripture is the resource for a definition. When scripture describes angels in heaven worshipping and when ancient patriarchs and peoples worshipped, and when early New Testament saints worshipped, that worship clearly related to the person who is the object of the worship rather than to the quality of human performance. Worship in this scriptural sense, has to do with the worth of the object of worship, to be worshipped. God is worthy of worship. Inherent to who God is, is this obligatory response from every created being. There is a natural relationship between God and all that he has created, between the Creator and creation, creatures, mortals, individuals. This normal relationship should naturally compel the created to worship the Creator. The requisite response to worship God has been suppressed and repressed in some of creation, blocked and inhibited, confused and misdirected, intellectualized and redefined or ignored altogether. When something so right as worship, goes so wrong, the only explanation is sin as scripture defines and describes and condemns it. When sin is eradicated from the human through human faith in the reality of Christ's atonement, which issues in divine pardon and renovation of human loyalty, then the Creator once again receives the worship suitable to him, the worship God deserves, the worship the creature yearns to give. Such worship is not prescribed by specific days and times. It is relevant always and constantly appropriate. All that we think, say, do, see, and imagine, shall be to the glory and praise of God. Such concentration insures purity of thought and action.

GLORY IS THE GOAL

Defeat of Rebel Angels by Pieter Breugal Sr

At a time before time, a cadre of angels perpetrated a rebellion against God and while it was an unsuccessful coup, the rebel group spun off to infect others. In the broad window of pre-history God determined to create humanity and the world in which humankind would live. The original design and creation was perfectly achieved by the command of eternal God and time began. Humanity bore God's likeness in goodness and innocence. Humanity's participation in God's life and glory was the pre-eternal plan of God. For the briefest of moments there was intimacy between God and the first humans until the supernatural dissidents who had been evicted from God's presence, infected humankind. The faultlessness of the human species was soiled by personal sin that went viral. From that earliest time until now, the disabling effects of sin have dishonored the human story. This was not unforeseen and God did not react to that infiltration of wickedness as if surprised by it. Rather, since pre-eternity is that state of being from which God views all time, past, present and future as the same moment, He simply did what he intended to do. God elected to rescue fallen man through the incarnation and substitutionary atonement by God's Son who came supernaturally and then returned to the glory of his Father’s person. Since sin is viewed as personal liability, only individual faith in Christ's work that leads to salvation will be effective to regenerate a sinful person. Yet that person recreated and lived in by God's own Spirit, the second person of the trio of divine persons, lives with the assurance of entering the glory where God dwells beyond time. Glory is the goal toward which the whole story of redeemed humanity is moving.

WHAT DO THE EFFECTS TELL US ABOUT THE CAUSE?

What would a God be like who was responsible for the created universe in which we creatures live. If God cannot be seen, it would be reasonable to think that we could understand God by examination of his creation. Creation would inform us that this God’s authority and power is not merely formidable but supreme. Further, this supremacy would be infinite which would infer that God stands alone without peer. Creation operates within cycles of time and parameters of space, so God would have to exist outside both space and time, that is, God would need to be super-natural. In other words, God would not be limited by space which God created, so God would be inexplicably present everywhere. Therefore, God would be immaterial, and God would be time-less. That would also insure that God would be change-less. The creation of personality insists that God is personal because the impersonal cannot produce personality. Creation speaks of purpose rather than randomness so God would have to be the deliberate cause. That would explain why moral law was integral to God’s creation because God loves what he has made.

THE ATHEIST’S DILEMMA

Not wanting to believe in God, the atheist must face the interpretation of honest science, which acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it cannot be eternal. That the universe had a beginning, compels the presumption of cause. That cause cannot be nothing, but must be something and the only conceivable eternal something is God. The human creature resembles its cause, and that cause certainly cannot be an amoral universe. Rather, only divine causation can account for created beings who have personality and are occupied with purpose, meaning, and moral values. It is unthinkable that random ‘nothing’ produces finely-tuned everything. It’s improbably that non-life produces life. It’s unimaginable that unconsciousness produces reason. Those are greater leaps of faith than is required to believe in God. Belief in God is affirmative not speculative.

EVIDENCE LEADS WHERE?

Something exists. The human is something. It is impossible for nothing to create something, that is, nothing cannot self-create. The human creature is not here as a result of self-creation. Something cannot exist prior to itself. Something has a cause. Evolution’s ‘spontaneous generation’ argument is dated and has been abandoned even by reasoning atheists because they know that something does not emerge from nothing. Nothing arises without a cause. Reality is not self-created. Therefore, that which is reality rather than illusion is either an eternal reality or it is a reality that has been created by something that is eternal whether that something is the universe itself or the Creator God. A necessary and eternal something exists. The question that then occupies us is, where does the evidence lead?

MIND BEFORE MATTER

Dissimilar to other creatures, the human has capacity to reason that his very existence points to a supreme power or being. Beyond mere instinct, the human creature thinks. She thinks and concludes her own existence is reality rather than illusion. She is something, a something extant in a universe of planets and stars. The universe too, is something rather than nothing. Convinced by thinking that her existence is not an illusion, she can reason that she created herself, or she must choose to believe she exists as a creation of an eternal universe or an eternal power/God. An atheist cannot evade faith, since if he will not believe in eternal God, he must believe in eternal universe. With either alternative, mystery remains profound, unexplainable. Did matter simply always exist? Or, did a Mind exist before matter?

FIRST MAN AND FIRST WOMAN

That act of rebellion by the first man and first woman defaced the image of God in the human in various ways. Human intelligence was impaired so people constantly erred in their reasoning. Morally and socially humankind no longer reflected God's image, being unable any longer to distinguish between good and evil but rather began to exploit others. Human mental, emotional and relational health has been damaged ever since. And you can’t fix those areas first and then hope to have a relationship with God.

God’s good news is that because God made humanity to reflect him and that image was marred by sinfulness he determined to restore the image bearing capacity and to do that he sent his Son into the world where the Son, Jesus, lived such a perfect sinless life that he revealed the exact image of the invisible God, actually God in human flesh, and the plan all along was that this sinless one would give himself as an atoning sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. This is the great recovery of the image bearers.

When the resemblance was distorted, God went to an extraordinary length to rescue us. And from the moment that you place your faith in Christ’s atoning death for sin, you are redeemed through Christ and you begin to bear the image of His Son. Jesus modeled that life. Your life now corresponds with God’s creation purpose that you should be like God and enjoy powers that God puts in you. It is what it means to be truly human.