Duh! Five Big Spiritual Truths - Part Two

This is the second of five posts on five spiritual "discoveries" I made and later wondered - how in the world did I never really "get" that?


I last looked at "Repentance" - it's not emotional self-flagellation, but simply turning to the Lord with your whole heart.  Grief isn't needed for this, but having joy in the Lord most definitely is. 

Today, we look at Jesus.

JESUS - NOT JUST 'DEITY'

Like all good Christians, I knew that Jesus was divine.  Everybody who was Christian taught that Jesus was God.  He was both 100% God and 100% man.  I dutifully put a check mark next to each box (100% God - check!  100% man - check!) and went about my way.  It seemed like the most important reasons for this was for Jesus to be able to be the perfect (because He is God!) sacrifice (because He is man!) for us.

Supposedly, Jesus had emptied Himself of some 'non-essential' attributes of God so that He could become a man.  This was sincerely based on Philippians 3.  But as I later discovered, this hadn't been the opinion of the church for the first 1800 years (See Wayne Grudem's excellent article, here, and CARM's brief synopsis here).  Actually, claiming that Jesus 'emptied' Himself of even some of the Triune God's attributes would mean that He wasn't fully God.  God is a Triune Being, and as hard as that may be to understand, what we can understand is that one of the essential attributes of God is His Triune-ness. Neither the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, nor Jesus ever work 'independently.'  They always are, always will be, and always have been working perfectly together, in a dance of Triune love and interaction.  

But Jesus isn't 'just' fully God.  He is the incarnation of God for the express purpose of being the definitive, forget-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-God revelation of who God really is.  He didn't just come to die for us, He came live among us to show us who God was.

"In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times 

and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,

sustaining all things by his powerful word."  - Hebrews 1:1-3

"The exact representation of His being."  Yep, those prophets in the Old Testament were pretty good, and they spoke God's words plain and true.  But don't take their words and try to say God doesn't look like Jesus, because Jesus is the be-all to end-all of revelation of who God is like.

 "In Him [Christ] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."  Colossians 2:9

How much of the Triune God dwelt in Christ?  "The fullness."   Don't accept this as just a doctrinal statement, but let it sink down into your mind and be the light through which you understand who God is.  Jesus is the definitive revelation of who God is. 

Wouldn't it be awesome to see our heavenly Father?  Wouldn't that be thrilling?  Jesus was asked by Phillip if Jesus could show them the Father.  Jesus responded incredulously.

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip,

 even after  I have been among you such a long time? 

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  

Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? 

The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. 

Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  

Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

John 14:8-11

Jesus tells Phillip, "Hey, don't ask to see the Father. You have seen the Father - you're looking at Him."

People often start in the wrong place when they think about God.  They make a list of 'attributes,' and then impose them on God.  Or worse, they say God is His attributes.  But God is God - He is a Being.  We can describe aspects of His Being by applying labels like omnipotence and impassible, but these labels are just that - labels.  If we really want a clear picture of what God's personality is like, we need to look to Jesus.

One alleged attribute of God needs to be ripped out of our minds.  It's called impassibility - the idea that God cannot change in any way, and that nothing can affect Him.  This is partially true - God's character and goodness never change. But people who hold this doctrine in a severe way say that God doesn't even have emotions, because that we mean that we humans can affect God.  Here's a list from this website that examines (and rejects) claims that God actually doesn't have any of the following emotions:


Rejoicing: "The Lord shall rejoice in his works" (Ps. 104:31); also Isa. 62:5; Jer. 32:41
Sorrow and Grief: "It grieved him at his heart (Gen. 6:6); also Judges 10:16; Ps. 78:40; Isa. 63:10
Love: "For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth" (Prov. 3:12)
Repentance: "It repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth" (Gen. 6:6); Ex. 32:12,14; 2 Sam.24:16; Ps. 106:45
Anger, Hatred and Vengeance: "God is jealous and Jehovah revengeth; the Lord revengeth and is furious: the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserveth wrath for his enemies" (Nah. 1:2); also Ex. 15:7; Ps. 5:5; Isa. 1:14
Comfort: "And I will be comforted" (Ezek. 5:13); also Isa. 57:6
Jealousy: "For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" (Ex. 20:5); also Num 25:11; Deut. 32:16
Zeal: "The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this" (Isa. 9:7)
Displeasure: "I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction" (Zech. 1:15)
Pity: "Then will Jehovah...pity his people" (Joel 2:18)


RB Theime writes,  "God can no more love us than He can be angry, jealous, impatient, or changeable.  "Love," in John 3:16 is simply an anthropopathism."     This is blasphemy.

The quote above is a prime example of how people exalt their own 'doctrine' and throw out the clear words of God about Himself.  "No, God... we know that isn't true of you."   One must wonder what, exactly, God meant by these words, and why He bothers to 'communicate' them to us.

But Jesus was the ultimate anthropomorphism, and He was still the perfect revelation of the Father!  The Eternal Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.  He was the exact representation of God.  He was the fullness of the Godhead.  He can't be dismissed as not being the best revelation of God that we could ever have, just because he was made in human form.  Besides, humanity was made in God's image to begin with.  The Triune God doesn't have a body as part of His innate nature, but He does love, and have compassion, and have zeal for justice.  Jesus showed us this clearly.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, 
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.  
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, 
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.  
 Hebrews 4:15-16


God always did empathize with our weaknesses.  He grieved with us just as surely as Jesus grieved at Lazarus' tomb.  He was angry with false prophets just as surely as Jesus was angry with the Pharisees.   He had compassion on us.  But we never would have believed it was true if Jesus didn't show us.  From healing people just because He cared (and sending them away under strict orders not to tell anyone) to spending time talking with the woman at the well, Jesus showed us who the Father really was.

Even on the cross, Jesus was showing the world how greatly the Triune God loved us and wanted to share in our sufferings, to take upon Himself the sorrows and sins and griefs of humanity, and to break the chains of oppression and death and sin from us.

Islam says we just need to submit under Allah's unchanging will - relationship is impossible, for Allah is truly impassible.  But Jesus blows that idea out of the water.

Want to know the Father?  Get to know Jesus, and you'll know the Father.

In fact, even now when God reveals Himself to us, He does so "in the face of Christ."

God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” 
made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, 
displayed in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6

Why "Paradigms and Windows"?

Why is my blog titled "paradigms and windows", even though the web address is "sufficientGod.blogger.com"?   

It's because many "Christians" can quite confidently say "My God is sufficient for all my needs," but the fact is, they don't really think this is true - even though they think it is.   Their true beliefs lie much deeper than that.  Watch this video and see what I mean.  

Duh! Five Big Spiritual Truths - Part one

This is the first of five posts on spiritual "discoveries" I made and later wondered - how in the world did I never really "get" that?


The series will cover:

Repentance – Not just for specific sins, but for your way of doing life.
Jesus – Not just 'Deity.'

God Himself – He doesn't just give you spiritual growth.

Drinking from God Himself – Are you doing it?

The Everyday Miracle of Life - Have you grown old and boring?

So, here goes the first one:  

REPENTANCE

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites 
who were instructing the people said to them all, 
“This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” 
For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.  
 Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to 
those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. 
Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”   
The Levites calmed all the people, saying, 
“Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.”     
Nehemiah 8:9-11

 Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell facedown to the ground before the
 ark of the Lord, remaining there till evening...The Lord said to Joshua, 
“Stand up! What are you doing down on your face?  Israel has sinned... 
...Go, consecrate the people." 
 Joshua 7:6-11

It is our self-focus that makes us want to lie down and berate ourselves before God.  God's call for us is to get up, stop making such a scene, consecrate ourselves to him, let God point out our sin and then put it to death ruthlessly, and rejoice in His cleansing.

Repentance is from the Greek word metanoia - literally, to change (meta) your mind (noia).  Sadly, the Latin translation of the Bible translated metanoia as penance - an act of paying for your sins, essentially, by righteous deeds that proved how sorry you really were.  (This was totally wrong).

When I was younger, I thought I repented plenty.  Every time I sinned, I felt horrible, and begged God to forgive me.  I beat myself up - "How could you do that again!  You are so stupid!  You have no self-control!"  I even asked God to kill me if I didn't stop sinning.  Graciously, God ignored my sincere theatrics.

To me, Jesus had died for my sins, and now out of gratitude, I should try to live a life that honored Him.  But I usually didn't, so I spent a lot of time repenting, feeling bad, and "trying harder."  I thought the "weep and wail" of James 5:1 was for me any time I sinned (note: It's not.  Generally weeping and wailing is reserved for when judgement has already been pronounced by God.  For those covered by Jesus' death, there is no condemnation).

To me, repentance was a work that I did to get me to the place where God would then cleanse me through His grace.  I thought I had to feel guilty enough, to really realize how bad my sin was, before God would really forgive and cleanse me.  I knew I had already been forgiven in an overall sense, just not in a 'right-now' sense.

What I didn't realize was that all this emotional self-flagellation was fueled by the false idea that I had to be good enough.  I knew that as a follower of Jesus' I had trusted Jesus to pay for my sins, and I was "justified by faith" (Romans 4:5).  And I knew that I should live a holy life.  But I had not realized the truth that "the righteous shall live by faith" (Galatians 3:12).  I had no idea what that meant, but I probably thought that it meant we should try hard to trust God and obey Him.  -sigh- How little I knew of what it really meant to trust God and give up on myself.

CS Lewis wrote:

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, "My yoke is easy and my burden light." He means both. And one can just see why both are true.

…The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves,” to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be “good.” We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centred on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.  And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As he said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.


A life of faith is characterized by depending on God - it's throwing yourself into his care, that is, entrusting your self - your entire self - to him.  The opposite kind of life is a life lived by self-dependence - "trying hard" - trying to keep God's moral rules 'on your own steam.'   Self dependence might manifest itself by feeling really bad when you don't 'measure up', or by trying hard to feel guilty so as not to make the same bad decision in the future.  Guilt won't make you holy.  Guilt won't help you repent.  Repenting doesn't require guilt.

When I am resting in God's love and forgiveness, that is when I feel most grieved about the times I have turned my back on God.  It's like having a wonderful time with a friend after you have wronged them and been forgiven - it is then, in the embrace of their friendship, that you most poignantly recognize how much you value their friendship.  It's not by standing far away and telling them how awful you have been.  "Changing your mind" means you stop focusing on trying to feel guilty, or unsatisfied, or remorseful, and just turn to God's love recklessly and wholeheartedly.

Brother Lawrence wrote:

...when I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, 'I am used to doing so: I shall never do otherwise, if I am left to myself.'  If I fail not, then I give GOD thanks, acknowledging that it comes from Him. 

All possible kinds of mortification, if they were void of the love of GOD, could not efface a single sin. We ought, without anxiety, to expect the pardon of our sins from the Blood of JESUS CHRIST, only endeavoring to love Him with all our hearts.

Final thoughts:   Don't beat yourself up if you sin.  You sinned because you had already wandered from Jesus, and then fell prey to temptation, as you always will when you wander.  Stay close to Jesus, or run back to Him, but don't waste your time beating yourself up.  God hasn't told you to, and it won't do you any good.  Change-your-mind about life by determining to simply stay with Jesus.  When you do sin, see it only as a symptom of having wandered and a signal that you need to return to the One who is calling you.  Emotional self-abuse will not give you the victory... but you can find strength in the joy of being in God's presence.

                                    "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."

Suffering, meaning, and a holocaust survivor

Tragedy.   Suffering.  Death.

What is the point of it? 

I believe that Christianity does not offer a clear cut answer to this question - at least, not a simplistic answer.  That men make evil choices and harm others is evident.  That our suffering can bring about certain benefits is clear to anyone.  That our own choices sometimes bring harm upon us is equaly clear.  But what meaning are we to make of particular incidents like the one in Sandy Hook, now that it has happened and we have made the obvious assessment that it is evil?

Viktor Frankl was interned in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. His wife, father, mother, and others dear to him died in the concentration camps.  His life's work - a manuscript he had been writing - was thrown away when he was brought into the camps.  He faced the likelihood of death at every hour.  Reflecting upon such suffering, he found that the question, "What is the meaning of this?" was the wrong question to be asked.  It needed to be turned around.

“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct."

When we see evil, we ought to fight against it as the work of an enemy. We ought to rebel against it in prayer, in condemnation, and in restoration - as much as feeble creatures such as we can help to restore things. 

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.  For there are those who say - using religious language - that these things are not so evil as they seem.  They assure us that these, too, are a wonderful "part of God's plan."  They say, "If only we could back up, and see it from God's view, we could see the beautiful tapestry He is weaving."   This is rubbish.  God has shown us His view, and He does not claim that all evil events are of His doing.

"Christianity-and-water, (is) the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right -- leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption.... If you think some things really bad, and God really good, then... you must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God.' The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.' ( I mean exactly what I say - nonsense that is damned is under God's curse, and will - apart from God's grace - lead those who believe it to eternal death). For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again." - CS Lewis

We must not serenely intone that this is all just "part of God's plan." No, it is part of the cosmic war-zone that we find ourselves in the middle of.   In his bodily ministry, Jesus waged war against disease, greed, demonic influence, and violence. Even "natural evils" such as storms were confronted and yielded to his rule. We still find ourselves in the midst of a war-zone. We are not promised comfort, or life, or freedom from distress. Romans 8:38-39 assumes that we will have a hard time of it here in this war-torn world.   But the promise is that, in the midst of this chaos and evil, nothing can separate us from God's love.  Let us not go too far, and assume that he owes us protection from every evil act of others. He does not promise that.  Freedom to choose good entails the freedom to choose evil.  But even though God abhors the specific forms of evil that free beings have chosen and the suffering that comes from them, He will nevertheless use even evil things to bring about something good in the end, and even in the 'now.'   In this way, it is true that God is weaving these things into a beautiful tapestry - but He is weaving with disobedient threads, who are capable of partially spoiling parts, at least in the short run. God knows the infinite details of each life, and simply "zooming out" to an alleged "divine perspective" does nothing to eliminate the fact that some aspects of the world have gone terribly and horrifically wrong. But God is in the process of putting them right, even as they go wrong.  Let us not accuse God of ordaining every evil act so as to use it, just because he does use it for a good end.   As Jesus is our picture of God, we can see that when he is confronted with the death of Lazarus, he weeps.  He weeps even as he is planning to bring something good from it.  As we weep, we can know that God is weeping with us - even as we confidently trust that he is taking our broken threads and weaving them into something good again.

Perhaps we can catch a small glimpse of this "working all things for good" in the fact that most of us have some terrible occurrences or regrettable mistakes in our past. Often, we feel a strange gratitude to these things because we had to confront them and labor through them. We had to slay the dragon, as it were. We had to learn to suffer valiantly, or confront and realize the reality of the evil that we are called to fight against. We can feel this strange gratitude even while we intensely regret those very things, and condemn them as evil. 

The specific 'meaning' of evil events is often found in our response to them. 

Viktor Frankle, quoted above, answered his revised question in more detail:

"Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross.”

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.”

“I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.”

Jesus, shortly before he was taken to the cross, prayed that His disciples would know God and His love, for to know God was life eternal.   In the context of his imminent suffering, Jesus reveals what eternal life is:  it is to know God, and to know the love of God for them through Jesus.  In this war torn world, we will be called upon to battle and suffer.   It is in the comradeship of knowing God and knowing that He too, suffers with us, that we may experience what it means to answer life well.