The author of "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" sat for a televised interview with Anderson Cooper this last week. He was on TV to discuss his cancer and his chemotherapy and the question of whether or not his terminal illness had changed, or ever would change, his ideas about God. Mr. Hitchens spoke of the possibility of a death-bed conversion and assured Cooper that if it were to happen, it could only be attributed to one of two things: the effects of the pain-killing medication he expects to require or some sort of insanity brought about by the pain and suffering. It occurs to me that there would be a third possible explanation. Paul the apostle writes in the second letter to the Corinthians (4:6) that sometimes, the "God, who said, `Let light shine out of darkness,' shines in a human heart "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." It happens. A lot. It happened to the apostle Paul himself in fact, and to Athanasius and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon and G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis --- and to hundreds of millions of men and women and children who didn't go on to live lives or write writings that allow them to be remembered to this day. It's called the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and it has converted the hearts of many an atheist, some of them more outspoken (and some of them more intellectually rigorous) than the current crop of pop atheists who are writing popular books that mock the idea that there is a God at work in this world. And I think we should look for it. And pray for it: that the gospel of Christ might be shown again and again to be powerful, as it will be, even if Anderson Cooper and many others follow Mr. Hitchens' instructions to dismiss out-of-hand the reports of the sudden death of his unbelief. And while we are at it, can we not --- and should we not in view of what we believe about God being sovereign in his kindness and his power, and the gospel being "the power of God for salvation" --- look for and pray for the sudden death of the unbelief of people we personally know and love? 

If I get asked why I read the same few books over and over again (especially The Wind in the Willows and Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength and The Lord of the Rings and The Everlasting Man) [Note 1: I do get asked this.] [Note 2: A lot.], I say, "It's about vision." One thing I have picked up over the years is that maintaining a vision for personal godliness is as important as developing a vision for personal godliness. The books I read overand over again, besides providing me with a literary experience I can count on, remind me over and over again of myvision of the man I am committed to becoming and remaining. Reading The Wind in the Willows over and over again reminds me, because of the Water Rat, of how kind and understanding a friend I want to be. Reading The Lord of the Rings over and over again refreshes my vision of humility, perseverance and a pure heart, because of Aragorn and Faramir and Frodo and Sam. And in a category all its own, reading The Everlasting Man over and over again reminds me of why I believe in and worship and love and serve Jesus Christ. That's what I say to explain. And if the person who asked the question is still listening, I sometimes go on to say that while the books don't change in between my reading of them, I do. So that each time I return to the same great book, I return as a (slightly) changed, (slightly) different person, needing the reminders for (slightly) different reasons. [Additionally, I might also add that these great books are all complicated enough that even after twenty or thirty readings (!), I still come across details that I don't really remember ever reading before. But maybe this just shows that I'm actually not a very smart person, which is interesting since that is, I think, exactly what some of the people who ask the question were thinking when they asked. Hm.]
 

In the small eastern Ontario city where I lived in the early 1970's, there used to be a department store called Towers. (In view of the possibility that anyone wonders what happened to it, the fact is that all 51 Towers stores were purchased in 1990 by Zellers. Swallowed alive and so gone from the world as we know it. Without further ado, let me get to the point that before they disappeared, Towers stores advertised with a slogan which, strangely and a little annoyingly, I still remember all these years later. Here it is. "At Towers, everything connects. The last day of one sale is the first day of the next." So I have one favourable thing to say about Towers department stores. Their slogan was right. And that's why I think it is a good and profitable idea to develop a talent for walking past a candy dish without taking a candy. There happens to be a candy dish on a shelf of the bookcase immediately outside my office door. You may feel free to drop by and help yourself to a mint anytime you please. That's why it is there and is kept topped up. But I recommend that you don't. My view is that there is far more value in dropping by so as to practice declining the urge to pop a tasty little blob of sugar in your mouth. On principle. The value of the experience is derived from the fact that when it comes to living a disciplined life, and "not being conformed to the former passions which were yours in your ignorance," Towers was right. Everything connects --- and sometimes the last moment of one of life's little battles is the first moment of the next. What I've picked up over the years is that when I develop and maintain a discipline of some sort, practically of any sort,it influences me to discipline myself in other issues of life. The opposite is also the case. Slackness and sloppiness and lack of self-control in  one aspect of life leads to the same sort of attitude in other aspects. So a little bowl of candies can serve us well as an opportunity to practice syaing "No" to our impulses and appetites and desires. Fitting with this is what A. W. Tozer once said. Tozer, the world's only famous Alliance pastor other than A.B. Simpson, apparently once answered the question of how long to fast by saying, "As long as it takes to show your stomach that it's not in charge." I'm not entirely sure that he actually ever did say that, but if he did, I agree with him. And if he didn't, I like to think that he would have if he had ever thought to. I also like to think that he had a little dish of candies in his office that stayed strangely full because he always walked past it without taking one.

Fewer people care about re-tubing toothpaste than it seems from the amount of talk about it. Sometimes, what people actually care about are deeds which cannot be easily undone. Such is the care of such people that they are driven to speak allegorically. "Trying to undo that," they say, in referance to a practically undoable deed, "will be like trying to return the toothpaste to the toothpaste tube!" And sometimes they are right. On the other hand, sometimes what people care about are words that seem not able to be unsaid. In my experience,  on this count they are, in fact, wrong. Being an old hand at saying things that ought not to have been said, I have learned that at times, it's not all that hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Actually, it can be quite simple. All that it requires is clarity on the details of the regret, the humility to act upon the regret and a good sense of timing. With these three indispensables in hand, I look for an appropriate opportunity to get to work and then approach the person to whom I have stated the regrettable statement. "Hey," I say, as humbly and lovably as I can, "I was thinking that I would like to go back to a conversation we had a bit ago and say differently something that I said. Are you ok with letting me do that?" I should just say that one more thing is required in order to attain the desired happy ending here. That is, there needs to be a willingness to forgive. But that's something that "the other guy" needs to provide and the only real way to know if he has it is to proceed. So I proceed. "What I said, you may recall, was blah blah blah..." [Note: It's really important here that you quote yourself in such a way as to make peace, that is, with a clear and humble articulation of what was wrong with what you said. If you skimp on this, or exaggerate in your own favour, you're not likely to like what happens next! But to continue:] "I see now that I should not have said that at all..." [And here, the cap of the toothpaste tube pops open and the world waits to see if the toothpaste will return to its former place.] "What I should have said is blah blah blah." In real life, the success of this enterprise depends a lot on the content of the "blah blah blah" parts. For a long time now, I have used the definition of wisdom in James 3 to guide me in putting together this part of the communication. James writes, "The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere." In my experience, when I get this more-or-less right, that is, when I speak with "wisdom from above," the toothpaste goes back in the tube pretty nicely. Unsurprisingly, when my so-called wisdom is instead, as James puts it, "earthly, unspiritual and demonic," then the toothpaste tube turns out to be pretty unaccepting. Not that I actually care very much about toothpaste.

Paul the apostle instructed Timothy to "follow the pattern of the sound words" that he had heard from him, wnich means, I think, among other things, that it's important to use the right words to talk (and write) about important things. Even though Paul was speaking and writing in first-century Greek and we don't, and even though we speak and write in a language that didn't exist when Paul was writing to Timothy, it is still important to do our best to use the actual words --- that is, an accurate translation of the actual words --- that the writers of the Bible used. It's important as a way of avoiding many errors, including the error of making what is often a great challenge even more challenging than it already is. Forgiving someone, for example. We make the challenge of truly forgiving someone more challenging than it already is when we toss in the idea of forgiving AND forgetting. Forgiving can be hard enough without adding the (sometimes impossible) chore of also forgetting. Sometimes the idea of forgiving and forgetting gets brought into the experience by the (actually true) notion that we have been instructed to forgive others as God forgives us (e.g. Ephesians 4:32) and the (actually untrue) notion that "God always forgives and forgets." That's not an idea that anyone has ever found in the Bible. Not really. In fact, God doesn't forgive and forget. In fact, he can't. (It's just one of the consequences of being omniscient.) And while the omniscient God has what might be called this unique excuse for not forgetting, we mortals share a different excuse. Our excuse for not forgetting the offenses we have agreed to forgive is that in regard to some offenses against us, we are not able to forget. It is sometimes too bad that we aren't. It is sometimes good that we aren't. In either case, forgetting is not in our control. But it doesn't need to be. All that is required of us in regard to sins against us is that we forgive them "as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us" --- which means (Here perhaps comes another surprise!) on the condition that the person who has sinned against us, repenting, confesses the sin to us. Technically, the sinner doesn't even need to ask us for forgiveness, although it is always a nice touch. That's how God has forgiven us: conditionally. Really! God's forgiveness is conditional upon our repentance and confession (1 John 1:9). That's how God forgives us and so that's how we are obligated to forgive all those who trespass against us. And as for those offenses against us that we never can forget, as long as we actually do forgive them, everyone involved can get on with the challenge of getting on with the other challenges of life. That's what it means to forgive. It means cancelling a debt. Once a debt is cancelled, it's no longer considered a debt, even if all involved never lose their memory of it. That's what cancelling a debt means. Corresponding to that, what attaching the unbiblical obligation of forgetting to the biblical obligation of forgiving often turns out to mean is that when a person tells you, "I forgive you for what you did but I just can't forget that you did it,"  what he is really saying is, "I am choosing not to forgive you for this." And that, according to the pattern of sound words, is a position we are not permitted to take.

I like it when people describe a strong feeling as a "wave of emotion." I hear of waves of joy and waves of anger and waves of fear and waves of passion. It's a figure of speech that has helped me learn how to manage my own emotional life, such as it is. To me, picturing a strong feeling as a wave is loaded with significance when combined with my knowledge of surfing. I mean, real surfing. In water. On real waves. Admittedly, my knowledge of surfing is all second-hand, but I do have a number of Beach Boys songs on my iPod so I feel I have a good understanding of the basics of the sport. What I have come to see is that when I experience a noticeable wave of emotion, I have to decide whether to stand up on the surf board and ride it, so to speak, or to lie down on the board and paddle like crazy in the opposite direction until I am through it, so to speak. Which of the two options is the right choice depends on a correct understanding of the sort of wave it is. A strong wave of desire for something good and right and true should get me up on my feet for the ride. And I should hold that pose for as long as the wave lasts --- if it keeps moving me in a right direction. On the other hand, if the feeling of the moment is most likely to take me to a bad place, that is, into some experience of disobedience to God, then it's really important for me to lie low, to point myself in the oppposite direction and to do my best to paddle hard until each of the waves of that sort have moved past.  When it comes to surfboards, riding is fun and paddling is not much fun at all. But as every experienced surfer dude knows, a wave never lasts a long time. That means that we shouldn't take any wave too too seriously, whatever sort of wave it turns out to be. But it's always important to identify the wave of the moment for what it is and then to ride it, or to ignore it, accordingly.

Having recently completed a sermon series on the Ten Commandments, I am inclined to conclude this blog entry with some use of the phrase "Hang ten!" Readers will be pleased, I think, to read that I have decided to refrain.
 

It's been three weeks now since our Easter Sunday presentation, in which, for the final scene of the drama ("Hannah Then and Now"), I killed off Hannah's beloved father and so made the poor woman deal with the shock of sudden grief while the audience just sat there, taking it in (and perhaps wondering where these people got this script.) It's been two weeks since, in the launch of a short sermon series about sowing seeds and reaping harvests of righeousness, I talked for a bit about "my graveyard." So what's going on here? Am I dying? It's a bold guess. The fact is, I have my reasons for writing (a script) and talking (in a sermon) about dying. Three of them in fact. In the first place, the fact of death reminds me that dying is something that human beings do. It's good to stay clear on why many of the people who used to live around here don't anymore. It's a motivator. It motivates me to make good use of my present opportunities: for example, my opportunities to motivate people to "live with all their might while they have their being" (Jonathan Edward's words). "I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men" (Richard Baxter's words).  Secondly, being clear on the fact of my own mortality increases my sense of the value of a day. The thing is, I only get so many of them. Just three hundred and sixty-five each year of my life (with one Bonus Day once every four years, but it occurs in February so as bonuses go, it's not that big a deal.) In the third place, grasping the fact of death directs my attention to the future, when I will "reap what I sow, whether to my flesh or to the Spirit" (Paul the apostle's metaphor.) So that's why I killed off Hannah's father, and that's why I talked about "my graveyard" and my gravestone and my epitaph. Am I dying? Actually, yes. So are we all.
 

The first disciples had a hard time believing the resurrection of Christ.
Mark 16:9-11
 … he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

But in due time, they believed it. With all their hearts. Peter for example.
1 Peter 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
And John.
1 John 1:1-3
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you…

So you can be excused for having the same problem. But it IS a problem. A big deal, for a lot depends on believing it.
Romans 10:9
… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

TO DO because it is HARD TO BELIEVE:
a) Get over it!
Actually, all kinds of true things are hard to believe!  In fact, almost every true thing is hard to believe!

TWO TRUE THINGS THAT ARE HARD TO BELIEVE.

1)  The speed of the earth around the sun.
The Earth is moving around the sun, in a circle with a radius of about 150,000,000 kilometers (93,000,000 miles) and moving fast! How fast? It completes One orbit (940 million kilometers) in 365 ¼ days. How fast? 65,000 miles per hour! 110,000 kilometers an hour! 30 kilometers/second (18 miles/ sec) From here to St. Thomas in 1 second. It is actually very hard to believe: but we have it on good authority! So we believe it!

2) How babies are born… Hard to believe: but I am an eye-witness. So I believe it anyway!

All kinds of unbelievable things are true: how babies are made, how human eyes work, how human ears work, how birds and butterflies migrate, the march of the penguins, how birds make nests, how spiders make webs, and then there's photosynthesis and nuclear fusion and gravity: we believe all kinds of things that are hard to believe because we have seen them for ourselves, or because we have the facts on good authority.

b) Get on with it!
Believe the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and the other essential details of the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, as it is explained in the Bible! Certainly, it is hard to believe: but we have it on good authority from eye-witnesses.

1. The reliability of the Bible 
2 Peter 1:20-21 …  no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 

Compared to any comparably ancient writings, the 27 “books” of the New Testament are enormously well-authenticated by the thousands of ancient manuscripts which date back to the centuries immediately following the composition of the originals. A book to start with on this subject is New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F.F. Bruce. 

2. The uniqueness of Jesus Christ
1 Timothy 2:5-6   For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… 

An examination of the words and actions of the carpenter-turned-itinerant-preacher/teacher, whose life and work is written up in the four Gospels, displays his stunning and admirable uniqueness. From whatever perspective he is considered, the “founder of Christianity” simply stands impressively alone in his interactions, his insights, his values, his teachings --- and his take on God and the human race and the relationships between them.  
It is in regard to this piece of my explanation that I recommend The Everlasting Man by G.K.Chesterton.

3. The parade of the giants 
Psalm 16:3  As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. 

Stretching over the 2,000 year length (So far!) of Christian history is the long procession of brilliant and impressive Christians. The parade of the gigantically excellent examples begins (for me) with the apostle Paul, first an aggressive opponent of the Christian faith and then an outspoken advocate, quite willing to lose everything and to bear torture repeatedly rather than deny his Lord. A brilliant shining example. One of many! 
Then there is Athanasius (“against the world”!) Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, G.K. Chesterton, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, C.S. Lewis, Jim Elliott: all heroes to me.  I read their works and I read of their lives and my heart cries out, “I want to be on their team. When these saints go marching in through the gates of heaven, I want to be in their number!”  (RECOMMENDED READ: Surprised by Joy, the spiritual autobiography of C.S. Lewis , who once upon a time was a brilliant young Oxford student and a bitter atheist and who lived to became a 20th century version of the apostle Paul. Especially check out Chapter 14, “Checkmate”  ~  And I would recommend that you get to Chapter 14 the best way, which without a doubt, is to first read Chapters 1-13!)
 

4. The capacity of the gospel IN ITS SIMPLICITY to be understood, believed and practiced by all ages and all sorts of human beings. 
Romans 1:16  For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes

The whole world is in great great need of some good news!   “The good news” of the New Testament is simple enough to fit and satisfy all ages and sizes and depths of human capacity as evidenced by its worldwide acceptance.  Its rapid spread throughout the Roman Empire in the first three centuries is a case in point. (And so is its rapid spread through the People’s Republic of China in the second half of the 20th century! Now, there are 100 million Christians in China! (One tenth of the population of China!) The gospel’s “conquest” of the Roman Empire was not by force of arms or by civil action but rather by the life-changing force of the message itself and by the world-shaking impact of the lives and deaths of the men and women and children who refused to deny the Lord they had come to believe. (“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” wrote Paul to the Christians in Rome in the middle of the 1st century, “for it is the power of God for salvation…”  And he paid the price. About 150 years later Tertullian wrote from North Africa that “the blood of the martyrs is seed.”)  

5. The capacity of the gospel IN ITS COMPLEXITY to address all aspects of personal, familial and societal life.  
2 Peter 1:3-4  His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises… 

After all these years of seeking to provide good advice to all kinds of people of all ages regarding the challenges and complications of their personal and relational and vocational and community lives, while trying to deal with the challenges and complications of being the young man I was and then the grown man I have become, I am still most helpfully directed in my counseling by a deep-rooted confidence in the Bible’s principles. I have found that paying close attention to, and seeking accurate understanding of, and attempting precise compliance with what the Bible teaches provides every sort of person with practical, personal guidance that effectively addresses the personal and interpersonal messes that we human beings have the tendency to create for ourselves and one another.  
And beyond the borders of my own experience as a counselor, I find in the Bible a great wealth of knowledge regarding solutions to the major issues facing every group of people, particularly families and churches and civil societies. 

6. The confirmation   i.e.  my own personal confirmation of almost four decades (!) of prayers specifically answered.
Psalm 18:1-3  I love you, O Lord, my strength… I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. 

In what must now be many hundreds of examples, a prayer of mine has been answered specifically, often in ways which bring about more good than I had been looking and praying for. Some other man might come to some other conclusion from a similar long series of experiences, but the conclusion I have come to is that the prayers I have prayed to God through Jesus Christ have not gone unheard or unanswered. “Call me Ishmael” (The name means “God hears.”)

7. The feel of truth 
Psalm 42:7  Deep calls to deep…

This one is totally subjective but the way a thing feels isn’t always insignificant. The point is: ”Deep calls to deep.”  For what it’s worth (And it’s worth a lot to me!), it feels to me that the deeply imbedded conviction that there is profound significance in being human corresponds very precisely with the Bible’s statement that we human beings are made in the image of God and so are meant to know him. I can go on.  Augustine’s famous one-liner feels true. (“You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”)  And it’s not just the experience of being alive that feels as if it means something. To me, the world itself seems to mean something. To me, it feels as if the heavens are in fact declaring the glory of God and showing his handiwork,  that the mountains and the hills do break forth into singing (in voices that human ears cannot hear!), that the trees of the fields do clap their hands and that the birds in the trees and the skies are singing to God.    

TO CONCLUDE: These are seven of the reasons that I have been an enthusiastic follower of Christ since 1971. These are seven of the reasons that I intend to remain one for the remainder of my life and that I desire to die as one in due time.  
   

A guy I know quite well and respect and like a lot asked me a question a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to know about a decision I had made. He asked about it and then he apologized for doing so. I explained my reasons as well as I could, acknowledging that it was a judgment call on my part and that I understood why it might be questioned. And then I took the conversation back to his apology. "You didn't need to apologize," I told him. And then I surprised him by adding, "In fact, you should have apologized if you hadn't questioned me." Then I explained myself. Making decisions is what leaders do and some decisions are bound to raise questions. A leader needs to be able to answer these questions but can't if they aren't asked. When a person with a question chooses not to ask it, that question becomes like a little stick that goes into a box and gets carried around for years. It might be a little thing, like a little stick but, all the same, it goes into a box and stays there. If the holder of the box keeps choosing not to ask the questions that occur to him as he watches his leaders leading, his box can get quite full of little sticks. And this, I think, explains the only horrible part of my work as a pastor. The only horrible part of my work as a pastor is the experience of losing totally the respect and confidence of a formerly enthusiastic and supportive church person. The complete change of mind about my leadership sometimes seems to come about suddenly but I'm quite sure it never does. Before the box bursts into angry flames, it needs to be filled with sticks. Once it's full, or even fairly full, it can burst into flames with one conversation, but only because it's full of small dry sticks. "The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell."  (James 3:6) However the conversation comes about, whether demonically orchestrated or not, if a person has been collecting questions for a long while, "it only takes a spark to get a fire going." So I thanked my friend for caring enough to ask me why I had made the decision and encouraged him not only to feel free to do the same the next time something seems questionable but to feel obligated to do so, as proof that he values my leadership and our relationship.   

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