I’ve heard it said, mostly by people who worship the god of thought and knowledge, that:

“Nothing truly known can be truly feared”

I have no idea who said this first. But if you think about it, it’s accurate. A violent dictator, if you knew the troubled, insecure child inside, you would not fear him. A large guard dog, if you knew his name and that he loved bacon, wouldn’t pose much of a threat. Or how about the future, if you really knew what was going to happen tomorrow, you would not be afraid of it—you would know just what to do.

But there is one important exception.

God.

It is only when we truly know God that we truly fear him.

In Romans 8:32, we’re promised to be given “all things”. We know from elsewhere in scripture that this means “all good things”. I think what trips up a lot of Christians when pondering this verse is the difference between perceived good and actual good.

After all, Christians in lots of different places of the word go without bank accounts, cars, safety—even food. How could that be reconciled, except by differentiating between what we think we need and what we actually need.

John Piper comments like this:

What then does it mean that because of Christ’s death for us God will certainly with him graciously give us “all things”? It means that he will give us all things that are good for us. All things that we really need in order to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). All things we need in order to attain everlasting joy.

Sometimes what we would define as “good” for us or our spiritual walk is not so. Sometimes an even greater good is not having those things, in the interest of what we might learn, or how we might rely on God for what we do not have. Even safety and food. Some of the most basic needs.

Sometimes I feel as though I’m living among a generation of extremists. No, not religious or political extremists (per se), but extremists in, well, everything else.

“that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“that was the scariest movie I’ve ever seen!”

“this is the best song ever!”

“He’s the worst actor ever!”

“This is the best burger I’ve ever tasted!”

What happened to the middle ground? When was the last time you heard someone say, “yeah, the movie was pretty good.”? I suspect there’s a good chance you don’t hear that phrase all that often. Is it possible that this generation is so over stimulated with just about everything and nothing all at once that the idea of accurately representing your opinion on a rough 1 to 10 scale is nearly impossible?

I first noticed this back when I was leading a small group. As a vehicle to help along conversations with kids who might otherwise have difficulty speaking up, I would often ask them about their “top five favorite…” you fill in the blank. They had so much trouble pulling it off, I just quit with that technique altogether.

Of course, I’m guilty of this too.

After some reflection on it, it occurred to me that I think this falls somewhat in the same ball-park as Jesus’ commands about sincerity in Matthew 5:37:

“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil”

Okay, let me be clear. I don’t mean to imply that I think this verse is somehow directly applicable to the topic at hand. And I certainly don’t think our opinionated extremes are necessarily ‘evil’. But I think that part of the point Jesus is making is pretty easily applied.

To let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’ would be to allow your words to mean what they mean. Did I say I would do something? Then I should do it. No ‘oath’ should be required. No personally bloated ‘guarantee’ should be necessary.

So it would be with the way our opinions are laid out for others. I like a movie. Saying, “the movie was great”, should be fully sufficient to communicate that I enjoyed the movie and thought it was worth watching. Blowing it up with, “OMG, that was the best frickin’ movie I’ve ever seen in my whole entire life!” would not only be over-kill, but taxing on the value of our language and the reliability of my opinion.

So, as a generation, lets try an exercise. How about, when a movie/song/tv-show/website/joke/hybrid-farm-animal is just okay, we say something like, I don’t know, “the _______ was okay”. Or when the movie/song/tv-show/website/joke/hybrid-farm-animal was fun, but lacking some important elements, why not say, “I had a good time, but there were some pretty stupid parts.”. This is especially important when talking about hybrid farm-animals.

Perhaps with this experiment we can discover that there are more than two shades in the spectrum between black and white. Who’s with me?

Reading in Mark this morning, I came to the place where James and John ask Jesus that when he is in his glory in heaven that he would appoint them to sit on his right and left. Jesus promptly responds saying, “you don’t know what you’re asking.”

Matthew-Henry, in his concise commentary, has a great explanation of this. So, rather than attempting to give my own thoughts, I’m going to share Matthew-Henry’s.

“If Jesus would gratify all our desires, it would soon appear that we desire fame or authority, and are unwilling to taste of his cup, or to have his baptism; and should often be ruined by having our prayers answered. But he loves us, and will only give his people what is good for them.”

It’s a good reminder that when our prayers aren’t answered, it’s because the answer ‘no’ is much better for us than ‘yes’. If we trust him to truly ask in the first place, we must trust him when he says no.

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”

- Daniel Boorstin

I feel that in Christian culture, the concept of faith is taught in such a broad spectrum that the way we are really to interact with it is made somewhat ambiguous.

Many Christians assume faith must be totally blind. As children, or new Christians, we’re taught a set of Christian dogmatics and facts. They simmer for a long time. Then, most of us as (seemingly) mature Christians feel, on some level, that we have the answers that we need for our faith. But it doesn’t really add up quite right.

A near infant can learn that when he sees the symbols “F I R E T R U C K” arranged in the right way, he says the word “fire truck!” But this doesn’t mean he can read. What if that’s all we did? We simply memorized the arrangement of letters for thousands of words, but never learned the rules that built those words out of letters? We might conclude that we could read. Even though we couldn’t.

In some ways, this is how I think Christians often see their faith. A series of facts they’ve memorized and therefore concluded that their education in those areas is complete. As many ex-Christians know, it takes very little to shatter that faith.

I think for Christians to grow secure and strong, we need to fully realize that, even of the things we know about our faith, we know very little.

John Bright, a prominent Quaker in the 1800’s, is quoted as saying of an unknown person:

"he is a self-made man, and he worships his creator.”

This is beautiful in its simplicity, and potent in its punch.

The American dream, to rise from the mud to a place of power and authority and wealth. If possible, to do so in the face of doubting opposition. When these ambitions come to fruition, who do you suppose will most likely get the honor and glory?

The American Dream is to be self-made. It’s the only time when worshipping one’s creator is a stupid, stupid decision.

A few weeks ago I posted about how, among the other religions of the world with bizarre stories, Christianity, if looked at objectively may be the craziest. Today, I was Stumbling and I came across this quote:

Q: What is christianity?

A: It is the belief that a two-thousand-year-old jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple off a magical tree in a wonderland.

Now, add into that equation that the Jewish zombie was actually God, and suddenly alien overlords and private planets aren’t looking so bizarre.