Do all the good you can...

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.” 
~John Wesley~

Is God Selfish?

Recently a young German friend sent me an email with a good question. She wrote...

"Hey Paul, How are you doing? yesterday evening I had a really good talk with a friend here who's becoming interested in Christianity and thinking that there could be more to it. She asked me one question I asked myself some time ago but didn't feel necessary to find the answer to it. 

I was talking to her about my believe that every person has a "god given" emptiness inside of him/her that can only be filled by God himself. now the question: Isn't it selfish of God to put an emptiness in us that ultimately only he can fill?

Does this has something to do with our fallenness again? cause we were whole and complete back in paradise. we're perfectly in balance with God and needed nothing. can u give me some help, points, bible texts where I could start thinking and meditation on?

Thank you so much,

Julie"

What a great question! But I noticed that in fact the premise upon which it was based was questionable. This is what I wrote in response...

Dear Julie,

Does God really give us a "God-given" emptiness? I don't think you'll find that in the Bible. What God does offer us is his love. 

We are created to be in relationship with him. When we don't come to God in faith and live as his child, we experience an emptiness. Augustine said, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you." (Augustine Confessions 1.1.1) This is not a god-given emptiness. It the emptiness we feel because we have not included God in our lives.

Blaise Pascal has often been quoted as saying that, "There is a God-shaped hole that can only be filled by God." But this is not really what he said. He said, "... the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. (Pascal Pensees 425). 

We all experience this emptiness or a lack of completeness because when Adam and Eve sinned, it caused a break in the relationship that humankind had with God. The sin of Adam and Eve separated us from God. And because of that separation, we feel the void of God's absence. That could be called a "God-shaped hole." And yes, because we are fallen at birth because of that "original sin" we experience a separation from God. We all try to fill that emptiness with good things and some not so good. But the void created in us by God's absence can only be filled by God himself. That is why Jesus came to bring us to God. (1 Pet 3:18).

I hope this helps. Do share it with your friend. God is not selfish. He did not put the hole in us. When we don't come to him as his child, we put it there ourselves.

Grace and peace,

Paul

Reading the Bible as Story

In Scot McKnight’s book, “The Blue Parakeet” the idea of reading the Bible as story is a major theme. He says we must read the Bible as story. It is a whole series of stories written in different ways for different reasons. The earlier stories affect the later stories. As he says, none of the stories is the final story. But together they all tell “The Story.” It is a true story. It is a story with power. But most of all it is God’s story

Story is a very important word these days. We hear is quite often on the lips of young people. Some people say they think in stories (probably not most). They have been influenced by the post-modern period that we have all passed through. For post-modernity, story is more important than fact, than science or truth. Truth is something that those in power or those with money use to control the less powerful. (Those who write the story, control the glory). But stories can communicate without appealing to truth or being totally true. Since post-modernity distrusts truth as either being nonexistent or unknowable, it has appealed to story as a way to understand people and the world around us without having to be true. Stories communicate and there is wiggle room in them because the story can be “true” for you but not necessarily true for me. It can tell something of value without having to be true. And that’s okay, because I still understand something about you and the world around me without needing the obsolete and or even dangerous idea of truth.

As a Christian, I can’t accept that truth is non-existent, obsolete or even dangerous. The idea of truth is foundational for us to understand that there is an ultimate reality. There is objective truth no matter how hard it might be, a times, to discern it. Jesus said he was the truth. He said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. So, truth must stand.

But…as we try to understand the world around us, we realize that everything has a story. I have my story…the story of my life. You have your story. The town we live in has a story. The nation we live in has a story. The whole earth has a story. There is a true story for everything. For us to understand each other and the world around us, we need to listen to all the stories. Our existence is a series of interlocking stories.

Many people are uncomfortable with the word story to describe our existence. Some prefer fact and factual accounts. Others prefer more the objective perspective of “provable” history. Still others look to the empiricism, objectivity and precision of science. But all these are simply different ways of telling the story of something or someone. All are trying to communicate something in a fashion that will tell the real story.

I suspect the reason people have a hard time thinking of the Bible as Story is because stories aren’t always true stories. They are often fictional. We tell stories to our children before bedtime. Bedtime stories are meant to put children sleep. Novels are stories. Sometime they are pure fiction. Nowadays we have seen the rise of the “historical novel” where the background is carefully researched history, but the story line is fictional. The characters are real, but they could have been because their character and actions were taken from the accounts of real people living real lives and their real events. We fear that mixing fiction and history will cloud the truth.

The reason for approaching the Bible as story is because in reality, it is a story. It is God’s story of himself creating, interacting, redeeming and bringing to culmination the world around us. We must not deny that it is a story…God’s Story. But it is a true story. It is a powerful story. God tells us this story so we can understand him and his love for us. It tells us how to love him back and love the people he so loves.

As student of the Bible and theology now for nearly 30 years and I have seen people treat the Bible in ways that was never intended. People see the Bible as if it were written in the 20th century. They see it as a textbook. They want it to be history has they read it now. They want the biographical accounts of figures as though they were written from the perspective of a “modern.” Some think they can distill science out of the Bible. Some appeal to the precision of Greek and Hebrew languages and surmise that because of this precision one can simply exegete the texts based on a grammatical-historical basis and arrive the real meaning of a text based simply on the reading of an isolated bit of text. Still others see the Bible as communicating directly to them with no notion of it place in history or the culture from which is came.

The Bible is a series of writings done from 1500 B.C. to nearly 100 A.D. It uses many different ways of speaking: history, poetry, narrative, parable, metaphor, fiction, prophetic, apocalyptic and more. All demand that the reader pay attention to the way the writer wrote. All demand that the reader keep the writer’s words in their historical and cultural context. All demand that the reader keep in mind where the writer’s words…his part of the story…fits into the overall story. But most of all, the reader must keep in mind that the Bible is telling a story through the patchwork of stories, accounts and different kinds of writing.

Yes, the grammatical-historical method of reading the Bible is good. Yes, because of the descriptive nature of the accounts, we can see direct correlations between the physical world of the writer and how we see our world. Yes, there is a certain precision in the language. But, we must not make the mistake of expecting more precision from the language than it can give us. We must be careful not to think that the Bible is scientific. It does not have that optic. We must be careful that in exegeting the passages we study, that a too reductionist approach will not yield the message the author was conveying.

We need to remember that the Bible is story…God’s story told through the stories of the writers that he chose and that he gifted to write the story. And such, we need to become “his-storians.” We need to read the story. Listen to it time and time again. Get to know the fabric, the warp and the woof of the story. We need to learn when something is speaking figuratively or factually. We need to know when the meaning of a text must be qualified by its historical setting and background culture. We need to learn to ask the right question as we read so that we can get the right answers.

The more we listen to the story, the more we’ll understand the story. That is why even those who don’t know the Greek and the Hebrew (while being very important for translation and exegesis) can still understand the story. The story communicates. God made it that way. He speaks a language we can understand because it is a story of our earth, our world and the people around us. As “his-storians” we can hear his voice. But we will only hear it when we listen to God as the master storyteller. After all, it is his story.

"All doesn't always mean "all."

Back in July, while on my across-America bike ride, I read a short inspirational letter. It started with the first verse of Genesis 3. “Did God really say?” These are the words of the serpent casting doubt into the mind of Eve about what God had told Adam and her. Then the writer quickly moves to the Gospel story of a boy whose father brings him to Jesus for healing. The man asks “if” Jesus can help. Jesus says,

All things are possible for one who believes. ~ Mark 9:23

Our writer, trying to be helpful and encouraging says, “All means all.” And we should never let Satan tell us otherwise. All things are possible for the believer.

The well-meaning writer arrived at an overstated conclusion through a mistaken notion of how to do word study because…

“All” does not always mean “all.”

Our writer’s method of word study was to go to Strong’s Concordance and simply looking at the definition found there. If you know Strong’s it is very limited in it’s lexical entries. Just looking at those definitions is not good Bible Study. In translation and word study, we use a concordance to see where and how words are used in the Bible. This gives us a range of meanings. Then we use the context of the Bible to determine which meaning to use. The Greek word "pas" (or all) found in the text, can also mean “each,” “every,” “everyone,” everything” “whole,” “all things.” In the NIV the translators chose the word “everything” to translate pas in Mark 9:23 (in contrast his our writer’s version). And what is more, one translated word does not give the full meaning meant in a text.

“All” does not always mean “all.”

After Strong’s, good word study would include looking in a Bible Dictionary or taking a look at a Greek Lexicon like Brown, Driver Briggs. Then good word study would take a look at a theological dictionary like Colin Brown’s New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. There we find some other ways to think about the word "pas."   Then we look at all the verses in the Bible containing our word, thanks to our concordance, and see how the word is used. Then we decide which meaning fits our verse.

But just looking at the lexical entry in Strong’s is not good Bible study and does not yield the meaning of a word or the meaning of the text that contains it. And as we will find, “All does not mean all.” And this goes for the Hebrew word col as well.

Why is this so important to me? This past March, my father died of pancreatic cancer. Like nearly all Christians do, I prayed that he would be healed. But like 97% of everyone who is stricken by this cancer, he died in the first year after the diagnosis.

But the Word says that [it is the LORD] “who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,” (Psalms 103.3) But all, does not always mean all. God only heals 3% of all pancreatic cancer patients. Steve Jobs of Apple fame is one of them. But he is rare. The rest like my father die of the disease and within the first year. People die of disease all the time. Sometimes, all means all and sometimes it doesn’t.

Here are some other examples of when all does not mean all.

“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.” Genesis 6.17

“All” didn’t mean “all,” Noah’s family and all the animals and fish were not destroyed by the flood.

“You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” Genesis 6.19

The fish were not included in all living creatures.

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 14.26

The Spirit teaches all things, but not everything. Man cannot contain all knowledge because he is finite. Therefore all cannot mean all. But it can mean everything that we were meant to know: the totality of what God’s will for us is and not an iota more.

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Romans 8.32

Does this mean he will give everything we desire or everything that exists? No, he gives us all things that we were destined for. We do not get all things? All does not mean all.

“To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” 1Corinthians 9.22

Does Paul become a murderer, a thief, or a prostitute? No he does not become all things. He becomes everything that God might intend for him to become. All does not mean all.

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” Colossians 1.16

God did not create sin. God did not create angels that were fallen. God did not create sinful man. Man became sinful, but God did not create him that way. He did create everything and all things that he intended to create…the fullness of his intention. But “all things” does not mean “all things.”

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4.13

Here “all” translates pas. Paul does not mean we can do everything. God is not going to make me brain surgeon over night. He has not made me a wonderful preacher like (put the name of your favorite preacher here). No, we cannot do everything. But we can do all that God intends for us to do to bring him glory.

It is a hermeneutical error to look up a word in a concordance and cite its definition as the meaning for every like word like it. We have to look at how the word is used in order to arrive at the meaning of the text. It is a hermeneutical fallacy to impose the lexical meaning of a word on all incidences of the same word in the Bible. Every word takes on the nuance of the immediate context.

“All” often needs to be understood as a general promise that is not meant to be exhaustive in fulfillment. Even with God all things are not possible. God cannot go against his own nature. He cannot go against his character. God cannot sin. He cannot do all things. “All” does not always mean “all.”

So when we look at Mark 9:23, what is Jesus getting at?

The story is about a man who brings his boy to Jesus. The boy is stricken with a condition like epilepsy. But the condition comes from an evil spirit living in the boy. The man already brought the boy to Jesus’ disciples but they could not heal the boy. The man Jesus asks for help in the conditional. Jesus says, “If you can? Everything is possible for him who believes.” Jesus then proceeds to cast out the demon and heal the boy. This is completely possible for Jesus. And we believe in him because he can. We also believe Jesus when he says “Everything is possible for him who believes.” But evidently everything is not possible for someone who believes. In this case, prayer was necessary to express belief. So, all does not mean all. We cannot do everything. But we can do everything that the Lord empowers us to do for his glory.

I can do everything, and all things that God intends and wills for me. I can stand against what the world says is not possible. All things that God wants me to do I can do.

We can do all kinds of things, but not everything. God does not heal all our diseases. He does heal all classes of disease, and every disease until the one he allows to kill us.

This mighty assurance of Jesus is meant for us to take heart that when Jesus asks us to do something, we can do it, because he is right there with us giving us the power and his will to do it.

“All” does not always mean “all.” But we can do all things that come from faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Being Close to God

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? -- Deut. 4:7

Come near to God and he will come near to you. --James 4:8

Intimacy…it is one of the things we most need and crave as human beings. Without it, we become lonely. Without the closeness of intimacy, we become strange…crazy lone-wolves.

We long to be known by others for who we are. We long to have that same depth of knowledge of others. To be intimate seems to have been created into us.

Intimacy…closeness with God is also created into us. God’s purpose in creating us was for us to be known by him. God knows us through and through (Psalm 139). But he also wants to be known by us. This is why he reveals himself to us in the Bible, in history, through creation, through Christ and through each other. God wants to be known…for who he really is.

That is one of the reasons why he has given us prayer, for through it, we are close to God. In what precedes the “Shema” (Deut. 6:4), where Israel’s basic understanding of God and their relationship with God is revealed, prayer is part of the core of their faith. When we draw near to God through the self-disclosure of prayer, we are nearer to God, and he is nearer to us. When we listen to what God says to us while we pray, we are nearer to God.

Prayer is one of those ways God has given us to be close to him. It’s a great pity not to take advantage of it.

Pray and be close to God.

Discussion:

• Is it your experience that you are close to God when you pray?
• Does it ever happen that you are not close when you pray? Why do you suppose that is?
• Are there barriers to closeness with God?
• How can we deal with those barriers?
• What else would you like to say about intimacy with God?

Come let us walk in the light of YHWH

In the last days, the mountain of YHWH’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will be raised above the hills and all nations will stream to it.

Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of YHWH, to the house of the YHWH of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”

Come, O House of Jacob, let us walk in the Light of the Lord. (Isaiah 2:2,3,5)

Since the beginning, YHWH has made people to need him, to want him, to desire him. But since nearly the beginning, mankind has been of a creature of self-interest instead having interest in the YHWH, who made them. Even the nation of Israel, who YHWH established in order to reveal himself to the world, walked away from their creator. After all that YHWH has showed and done for them, they still focused on the whims and desires of kings and rulers, ironically, appointed by YHWH, rather than their own god-king.

People universally show a penchant for self-interest. Humanism, that once great movement that valued people for the reason of the innate greatness of mankind because they were created in the image of YHWH, was corrupted into a godless worship of the creature. The gift of reason, the handmaiden of theology, once so clearly understood to be too marvelous to have come into existence without out YHWH, became the standard by which everything was judged, even it’s creator. The creation around us instead of being cared for and nurtured because it was made by YHWH and reveals YHWH, has been mindlessly exploited and polluted to serve the purposes of it’s appointed caretakers.

In the midst of the grim history of mankind’s self-preoccupation, YHWH used individuals like Isaiah to call people back to their senses. He calls the people chosen by YHWH to reveal him to the world. Isaiah calls his people to bring the world back to the light. He calls Israel to be the light so that the nations again will see the light of YHWH. Israel, the people chosen by YHWH, were to be the nation where the people of the world would come for the wisdom of YHWH so that they might walk in the way of the YHWH.

And hasn’t this happened? Isn’t it amazing that even though Israel, for all it’s faults, was still used by YHWH to bring light and understanding to the nations. YHWHÂ’s new order for the world, announced by Isaiah is still being worked out by Israel’s Davidic line. Jesus, Israel’s messiah in the line of David, is seated in the temple of the “mountain of the Lord.” The nations are streaming to it to find the ways of YHWH and know his wisdom. All around the world, YHWH’s creatures stream to the “mountain of the Lord.”

YHWH’s people, anyone who is a part of the faithful “remnant” seeking his promised chosen one, are being used by him to bring the nations to the light. In spite of imperfections, in spite of inborn arrogance, YHWH’s redeemed show his light. God’s new order is being established in the world and will be established in the new earth.

Come let us walk in the light of YHWH.