In Our Pain, Jesus Crosses Over

"Jesus comes in side death, inside where Mary weeps. 'If only you'd been there,' we say, grieving over our private hurts and reaching out to anyone who will listen. And just there, Jesus crosses over." ~ Thomas Gardner, John in the Company of Poets

This Sunday, I have the privilege and pleasure of preaching before my church. The passage on which I have based my sermon is John 11--Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This is such a long, detailed, and rich story that I cannot bring out everything it could say. So, for the sake of time (and the congregation), I am going focus on one of John's major emphases in this story: love. Unfortunately, that means on Sunday I have to skip the portion of the passage where Jesus weeps with Mary and Martha, which shows us such a profound and important aspect of our Savior. But, there is nothing to stop me from writing about it here.

If you do not know the story or remember the details, go ahead and go read John 11. This story is the final, climactic sign (miracle) of John's gospel that shows Jesus to be God in the flesh--Lord over life and death. It also emphasizes Jesus' deep love for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. In the beginning, the sisters send a message to Jesus informing Him of Lazarus' grave illness because they know how much Jesus loves him. They think that His love will compel Him to come quickly to heal Lazarus, but Jesus has something else in mind--something more loving--so He waits and allows Lazarus to die (cf. Jn. 11:5-6). (More on this to come Sunday.)

When He arrives in Bethany, the sisters express profound confusion and pain. They had waited almost a week, and Jesus had not shown up. They had put all their hopes for their brother on Jesus, and Jesus had not given them what they wanted. And, they both said to Him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." (Jn. 11:21, 32) Mary and Martha were both trying to make sense of a traumatic situation and Jesus' response to it. They cannot fathom why He would let Lazarus die. And, we do that too sometimes, right? "Lord, why didn't you heal my friend from cancer? Jesus, why didn't I get that job I really needed? Jesus, why am I still alone? Lord, why is my child suffering? Why didn't You come quickly?" Now, those kinds of statements do not necessarily come from a lack of faith. Oftentimes they are simply cries of confusion and pain when we really have no idea how to respond. They are much like the questions many of the psalmists ask: "Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" "O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?"

So, how does Jesus respond to us? Well, we know that He raises Lazarus, but how does He respond while they wait for Him to act? He does two things: 1) He reminds them of who He is and 2) He weeps with them. In response to Martha, Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." (Jn. 11:25-26) He reminds her that He is Lord over life and death; that He is Ruler over everything, even our last enemy: death (cf. 1 Co. 15:26). And, Jesus does this with us too, right? He has given us His Word, and when we turn to it in times of trouble, we can see how much He loves His people and the glorious things He has done for them. When we turn to it in hardship, we can see that He is in control of our situation (cf. Eph. 1:11) and working good out of it (Ro. 8:28). He has also given us the Church. We hear the truth of who He is when the Word is preached, and we hear the truth of who He is from our brothers and sisters in Christ. We need those because in times of hardship, it is difficult to remember the truth, much less believe it. We need to read the truth of who He is in His Word and hear it from His people.

That is not all that Jesus does, however. In response to Mary, He weeps. He does not sit outside our pain in sovereign apathy. He does not simply give us propositions about His power. We look to Him with tears and say, "If only you had been there," and "just there, Jesus crosses over." He sees His Bride suffering, and He enters into the pain with her. In this story, certainly, Jesus knows He is about to raise Lazarus. That was His plan all along (cf. Jn. 11:4). Even in our suffering, He knows the good He is going to work out of it. Knowing the end, however, does not mean He sits on the sideline as an impassioned observer. He "crosses over" and weeps with us. Now, in this story, He does not weep because of His loss, for, again, He knows the end. He weeps because He sees the pain that sin and death have cause those whom He loves. So it is with us. Even though He knows the end, He "crosses over" into the pain and weeps with His Bride. Sometimes He does it through an unexplainable comfort worked in us by the Spirit. Sometimes He does it through the ministrations of a friend who sits and weeps with us. Whatever the ways, He "crosses over."

Friends, if you are in Christ, you have a Savior who is both sovereign over your problems and understands your pain. He is not just a Savior who is in control. That would make Him powerful but indifferent. He is also not just a Savior who understands our pain. That would make Him empathetic but impotent. He is sovereign and weeps with us. This is what He does for us--those whom He loves--while we wait for Him to act, and we need both of those while we grieve and wait. Here, in John 11, we see that Jesus has both, which makes Him the perfect Savior.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Happiness

O LORD,
Help me never to expect any happiness
  from the world, but only in Thee.
Let me not think that I shall be more happy
    by living to myself,
  for I can only be happy if employed for Thee,
  and if I desire to live in this world
  only to do and suffer what Thou dost allot me.
Teach me
  that if I do not live a life that satisfies Thee,
    I shall not live a life that will satisfy myself.
Help me to desire the spirit and temper of angels
  who willingly come down to this lower world
    to perform Thy will,
  though their desires are heavenly,
  and not set in the least upon earthly things;
    then I shall be of that temper I ought to have.
Help me not to think of living to Thee
    in my own strength,
  but always to look to and rely on Thee
    for assistance.
Teach me that there is no greater truth than this,
  that I can do nothing of myself.
Lord, this is the life that no unconverted man
    can live,
  yet it is an end that every godly soul
    presses after;
Let it be then my concern to devote myself
  and all to Thee.
Make me more fruitful and more spiritual,
  for barrenness is my daily affliction and load.
How precious is time, and how painful to see it fly
  with little done to good purpose!
I need Thy help:
O may my soul sensibly depend upon Thee
    for all sanctification,
  and every accomplishment of Thy purposes
    for me, for the world,
    and for Thy Kingdom.
~ "Happiness" from The Valley of Vision

If you have never read or used The Valley of Vision in your personal devotions, you are missing out on a great resource. It is a collection of Puritan prayers from Christ-exalting saints like Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, and many others, and it will bless your soul.

This particular prayer was one that I read this morning, and so many different lines caught my attention. (If you follow me on Twitter, you will find that my customary #MorningPrayers for next week will all come from this one prayer.)

• "Help me never to expect any happiness from the world..." Right out of the gate, the author reminds us that true happiness is found only in God. Certainly, He gives us gifts in this world that add to our happiness, but if we try to find our happiness in the gift without looking past the gift to the Giver, we will ultimately be disappointed. We will turn the gift into an idol, and those who worship idols become like them: empty. (cf. Ps. 115:4-8)
• "Let me not think that I shall be more happy by living to myself..." Again, the author reminds us of where our true happiness is. In our time and culture, we tend to think that we will find happiness if we live for ourselves or for some "noble cause" (which is just another form of living for ourselves). But, we were created to glorify God (Is. 43:7; 48:11; 1 Co. 10:31), and that is where we get the most joy (cf. Php. 4:4). The first question of the WSC shows us that these (i.e. God's glory and our happiness) are two aspects of our one end, which cannot be separated: What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. See how it is the "chief end" (singular) with two aspects? Jonathan Edwards did a great job of arguing this truth in The End for which God Created the World. This is a Christian classic that is well-worth reading.
• "Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies Thee, I shall not live a life that will satisfy myself." This basically carries the previous statement, on which I commented above, forward. John Piper has argued well in Desiring God that our greatest satisfaction is derived from pursuing our joy in God's satisfaction in Himself. While I think Piper is sometimes too cut-and-dry in many statements in this book, it is another Christian class that is well-worth reading.
• "Help me not to think of living for Thee in my own strength, but always to look to and rely on Thee for assistance." The Christian life cannot be living in our own strength. We just cannot do it. Fortunately, Jesus has told us, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Co. 12:9)
• "Lord, this is the life that no unconverted man can live..." Since we were created to glorify God and our greatest joy comes in that end, the unconverted man cannot truly live this life to its fullest joy and happiness. Paul tells us that the unconverted cannot submit to God and are indeed hostile to Him (Ro. 8:7). They will always pursue their happiness in something else that will eventually disappoint them. Life in meaningless if it is not live for God. Even atheists like Albert Camus have argued for this. As Camus argues, without God the only important life-question is whether or not to commit suicide, and his solution was simply to live with dogged hatred of the situation in which we are. There is no joy in that, but there is true joy in Christ. The world needs to see that in our lives. Christians are the only people who have anything worth laughing about, and the world needs to hear the laughter of the redeemed.

Let me end with a couple of quotes from Edwards and Augustine. One of my favorite things Edwards wrote is in The End for Which God Created the World:

God in seeking His glory seeks the good of His creatures because the emanation of His glory... implies the... happiness of His creatures. And in communicating His fullness for them, He does it for Himself, because their good, which He seeks, is so much in union and communion with Himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God's glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks Himself, and in seeking Himself... He seeks their glory and happiness.

The other quote on this subject, which I have previously written about here, comes from Augustine's Confessions:

Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of Thy servant, who confesses to Thee--far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship Thee thankfully--and this joy Thou Thyself art. The happy life is this--to rejoice to Thee, in Thee, and for Thee. This it is and there is no other.

May we always remember that any other joy or happiness we might experience is not true, but fleeting, and that we can only have true joy and happiness in God. Even all those things that God has blessed us with were given to us so that we could have joy in Him through happiness in His gifts. If we ever start to look to the gifts for joy, instead of Him, they will cease to satisfy, but if, while enjoying the gift, we look past it to the Giver, we will find true happiness in Him.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Christian Freedom and Love

"A truly emancipated spirit like Paul's is not in bondage to its own emancipation." ~ F. F. Bruce

I like how succinctly Bruce describes Paul's outlook on Christian freedom, particularly the freedom described in 1 Corinthians 10. I think we often get so caught up in the idea of Christian freedom that we are in bondage to it. That sounds like a paradox, I know, but think about how we react sometimes: when we know we are free in grace to act a certain way or participate in a particular activity, we often insist on being able to practice that freedom no matter how it affects someone else. Often times we become so attached to certain rights that we become a slave to those rights--we must be allowed to exercise them or we feel deprived. Paul did not see it this way. He knew that he was free in Christ, and he knew, as he states in Galatians 5:1, that he did not have to submit again to a yoke of slavery. But, his heart was captured by God's grace and love to such a degree that he was not in bondage to his own emancipation--he did not feel like he must practice his freedom at all costs. He did not feel like he lost something if he chose to forego a freedom for the sake of another. He was free to enjoy his freedoms when it was proper and curtail his freedoms when it would help his fellow man. As he states just a few verses later in Galatians 5:13, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."

There is a beautiful example in Acts of what effect such an attitude towards freedom can have. In Acts 15, the apostles and many elders met in Jerusalem for a council to determine what was to be done with all the Gentile Christians pouring into the Church and the mess that the Judaizers had caused. After deliberation and speeches from Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James, the council decided that salvation did come by grace through faith alone (Ac. 15:9-11) and that they need not impose the Mosaic Law on the Gentiles. However, when they wrote about their decision to the Gentiles they did send a decree--"It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality." (Acts 15:28-29) Now, that does not sound like it fits with Jesus' declaration of all foods clean (Mk. 7:19), Paul saying we should not submit again to a yoke of slavery (Ga. 5:1), or Paul's assurance that one can eat whatever is set before them without worry (1 Co. 10:27). That sounds like the Law. However, if we take it in context with what is going on at the time and the outlook of Paul (the deliverer of the message) on freedom, we come to a different conclusion. In that context, we can see that the command was intended to warn the Gentile believers not to alienate their Christian Jew brothers or their Jewish neighbors through practices they would find offensive (cf. Ac. 15:21). It was a request from wise, godly men to value love of their brothers and neighbors over the practice of Christian freedom.

Now, the point I am getting at is the result of this letter from the apostles--that is, the result of valuing love for our neighbor over the practice of our own freedoms. Acts 16:4-5 says, "As [Paul and Barnabas] traveled from town to town, [Paul and Barnabas] delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers." I added the emphasis on "so" to show what was happening. The result of the letter, with its commands to be sensitive to the weaker brother, was growth in faith and numbers. The preaching of salvation by grace through faith alone and the freedom to curtail freedoms in love, showed sensitivity, grace, and love to others that resulted in great growth in the Church.

I think that is a wonderful example of what a mature outlook on Christian freedom can result in. May God by His grace work in us this type of attitude.

By His Grace,
Taylor

God of the Gaps?

"Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a Legislator." ~ C. S. Lewis, Miracles

It is sometimes claimed by atheists that theists are "intellectually lazy" and simply uphold a "God of the gaps" mentality, which one could define as the tendency to attribute anything that cannot be explained scientifically to God. They charge that saying God created the universe or that God created species is simply filling God in the gaps of science, but as science discovers more about the universe, the gaps get smaller and God gets pushed out. "Theists," they say, "are lazy and just do not want to do the work of intellectual inquiry, so they say, 'God did it' and leave it at that." That is, at least, the claim many atheists make. Lawrence Krauss did this in his recent debate with William Lane Craig. He said:

There's a lot we don't know about the universe—a lot more we don't know than we do. That's the wonder of science; that's why I'm a scientist. But it is intellectually lazy to just stop asking questions and stop looking for physical explanations and just say, "God did it." That's lazy.

Now, Stand to Reason has given a good response to this challenge, and I would recommend you watch it:


Brett makes some very good points in this response. In particular, showing that there are sufficient stopping points in intellectual inquiry, is a good one. Also, pointing out that Krauss will only accept a physical explanation is important. Saying that all inquiry must obtain a physical explanation for it to arrive at a sufficient stopping point is, as Brett says, begging the question. It assumes axiomatically that only the physical exists and that only physical explanations are acceptable. It assumes naturalism as an a priori fact. Finally, pointing out that theists are making an inference to the best explanation (not filling a gap with God) is important. Perhaps the best explanation for the existence of this universe or life is not a physical one, and to say that could never be the case (as Krauss implies) is, again, begging the question—assuming naturalism as an a priori fact.

Brett gives a good response, and I just want to add a little to it. So, let's talk a little more about this so-called "God of the gaps" accusation. At the beginning of this discussion, we need to distinguish between mechanism and agency. This is a distinction that is overlooked far too often when this charge is made or even when it is rebutted by a theist. The success of science sometimes leads people to believe that since we can understand many of the mechanisms of the universe, we can safely conclude that there is no need to discuss or consider agency—the agent that designed, made, and upholds the mechanisms. That is a logical error that fails to distinguish between mechanism and agency.

I once heard an analogy that demonstrates this well. To explain how a Ford car engine works, we would need to talk about the details of thermodynamics and the principles of internal combustion (i.e. the mechanisms). Such an explanation would not necessarily require us to mention Henry Ford (i.e. the agent), but if we concluded that because we understand how the engine works (mechanism), then we have a comprehensive understanding of it and no longer need to believe in Henry Ford or any subsequent engineers (agency), that would be absurd! In a similar vein, just because we understand many of the impersonal mechanisms of the universe, that does not make it necessary or even valid to conclude there is no personal Creator who designed, made, and upholds it. In fact, as the above quote from C. S. Lewis shows, the early scientists went looking for these mechanisms and laws precisely because they believed in a Creator (agent) who designs such things. The mechanisms did not create themselves and do not uphold themselves, and even the more recent attempts to say that they do only push the question back a step and fail to disprove agency.

How does this contribute to our discussion of the "God of the gaps"? Well, consider the Ford analogy. Henry Ford is not a mechanism, and no one is using him to fill in the gaps of our knowledge about internal combustion engines. But, he is also no less than the agent who is responsible for the mechanism in the first place! The engine and the mechanisms all bear the marks of his handiwork as the agent who created them in the first place. Therefore, saying Ford was the designer and creator behind the engine is simply an inference to the best explanation, not lazy. Furthermore, saying this is not presenting Ford as an alternative explanation to the mechanisms of an internal combustion engine. It is saying he is the necessary agent. But, Krauss and others like him, often insist that theists use God as an alternative explanation to mechanisms, and that is simply not the case. We are following the evidence, making an inference to the best explanation, and saying God is the necessary agent. Just as Ford (i.e. agency) and internal combustion (i.e. mechanism) are both necessary for a comprehensive explanation of the car engine, so God (i.e. agency) and the mechanisms science studies are necessary for a comprehensive explanation of the universe and life. We are not filling the gaps with God, we are pointing out the necessity of both mechanism and agency and then making an inference to the best explanation for the existence of our universe and life itself. As Brett says in the above video, "That's not lazy. It's just good reasoning."

By His Grace,
Taylor

Trajectory Towards the Biblical Account and Adam and Eve

First, to all my friends and readers, let me apologize once more for not writing at all in the past couple of months. Things have been quite busy lately and while I love to write, it is has had to take a backseat to my new call as associate pastor at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church. This past weekend, however, God brought me through a huge milestone--ordination approval by our presbytery--which means all the time I was spending studying has been freed up. I am sure it will not take long for other things to fill it, but I hope one of those is writing regularly again.

Those of you who have read my blog for a while know that I like to follow and comment on the debate about the existence of an historical Adam and Eve. There has been a lot of genetic research in the past few years, which has brought this debate into the popular media. There are some who argue that the genetic evidence shows that Adam and Eve could not have been historical individuals. There are even some Christians that make this argument. I have argued, however, and still hold that their interpretation of the genetic evidence is guided by an a priori commitment to Darwinian evolution and that the data can be interpreted within an orthodox, biblical framework with equal validity. I would also argue that new research over the past couple of years has confirmed that validity of a biblical interpretation of the data. What I want to do in this article is look at the trajectory of the scientific data as a whole over the past several decades and show how it is converging towards the biblical account of human beginnings. (It might be helpful first to read this article or this article for background on the genetic evidence discussed below, though not absolutely necessary.)

The latest data comes from a few papers published in Science in August. All three of these (here, here, and here) argue that all male and female genetic lines can be traced back to two individuals--y-chromosomal "Adam" and mitochondrial "Eve"--who could have lived at the same place and time, which counters many previous arguments that claimed the "genetic Adam and Eve" could not have known each other at all. (Now, evolutionists are quick to argue that these two individuals were not the Adam and Eve of the Bible, but a man and women from a large population of the first humans whose genes just happened to continue on while all others died off. I argue against that here and Dr. Rana of RTB makes a case against that here.) Now, the dating of the original pair in these papers is not consistent with each other, but given the large margin of error/uncertainty when it comes to these types of calculations, it is understandable that their dates might differ. And, when all their error bars are taken into consideration, they could all overlap in the 100,000-150,000-year range. What is important is they all indicate that the genetic Adam and Eve may have lived at the same time and in the same place. (These studies confirm a few early studies from the end of last year and the beginning of this one, which Dr. Rana of RTB discusses here.)

These papers are the most recent body of scientific data, which is part of a long history of evidence that is converging towards a biblical account of human origins. Let me explain. About 30 years ago, the popular interpretation of the scientific data was that humanity originated about two million years ago and from independent pockets of populations of lesser species of the genus homo throughout the world. This multiregionalism data was difficult if not impossible to square with the biblical account of creation, so it was easy to dismiss the Bible as "anti-science" and irreconcilable. But, as data from archaeology and the fossil record was refined, as microbes and human parasites like lice were studied, and as genetic data began to be introduced, the date for humanity's origin became much more recent and the number of independent locations from which humanity may have originated became fewer and fewer. Eventually, multiregionalism was abandoned by the majority of the scientific community in favor of the Out-of-Africa model. In this model, it is believed that humanity originated in East Africa recently (about 100,000-150,000 years ago) and eventually migrated to the Middle East. So, the data has moved from multiple, independent origins of humanity millions of years ago to one fairly recent origin possibly in or about East Africa. In fact, the margin of error could put humanity's origin as far east as the Mesopotamia region or as far south in Africa as modern-day Ethiopia. This convergence towards the recent origin of humanity in one location fits very well with the biblical data that puts humanity's origin in a single location near the Mesopotamia region. Furthermore, in the past 20 years, human migrations have been studied, and the evidence points to a great migration that began fanning out from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East into all other areas of the earth. This migration event fits quite well with the Tower of Babel described in Genesis 11. In fact, even paleolinguistics is finding evidence for a single proto-human language, which also fits well with the Tower of Babel. And, finally, as discussed above, the data for a genetic Adam and Eve once showed that they existed thousands of years apart from one another, but that data is converging towards the two existing at the same time and in the same location. There is, of course, a margin of error in these dates (and, in fact, I argue here that biblically we might expect them not to match), but even with that error, the data is converging more and more towards a single, recent pair of humans from which all humanity comes.

So, about 30 years ago there was virtually no way to square the data with Scripture, but most Christians wisely did not abandon their Bibles and waited. As we waited, the scientific data and dominant interpretation moved away from very old, multiple, independent human origins towards a single, recent point of origin with a single pair of humans, which is consonant with the biblical account. The migration data shows that even more recently humans began aggressively fanning out from the Middle East into the rest of the world, which is consonant with the biblical account. And, paleolinguistics is uncovering evidence for a single proto-human language for all mankind, which is also consonant with the biblical account. In sum, the trajectory of the past 30 years of data has begun to coalesce towards the biblical account of human origins and migration. What was once virtually impossible to reconcile with the biblical account can now be easily harmonized with Scripture. Scripture said it first, and the scientific data is finally catching up.

Are there questions still to answer? Certainly. Fitting the Flood in, for example, is more difficult (though certainly not impossible, as I argue here). But, I do not think we should expect to have all the questions answered yet. We have been given snapshots of the earliest part of human history in Genesis 1-11, we are getting even broader snapshots of the earliest part of human history through the scientific data, and the trajectory of the data is pointing towards what the Bible has been teaching all along. Given time and patience, I believe the questions will be answered and the Bible will continue to demonstrate its veracity. We should find this harmony and trajectory very encouraging, but really, it is also exactly what we should expect. God created the world and wrote Scripture, which means as we collect more data from the scientific enterprise and interpret that data properly, it will show us that the Bible has been right all along. That is what we should expect. That is what we have seen over the past few decades. And, that is what we will see in the future.

By His Grace,
Taylor