If I had cancer, I’d want to know in time. It wouldn’t be a kindness to wait until nothing could be done. Particularly when my soul is at stake. Nowadays few people think about their soul. As Jesus says, “What does it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul,” the world yawns. But the word “soul” means “mind, emotions and will.” As your “harmless sins” grind away at your unkept conscience, can you see that you lose your ability to think clearly, to feel deeply and to force yourself out of your rut into a decision?

Many people believe the age of miracles (etc.) has passed away. Others insist it’s still here. There is often little practical difference in the lives of these two groups. We all agree that some things haven’t passed away, such as faith, hope and love. But we read the non-miraculous parts of the Book of Acts, and we still aren’t experiencing the same faith, power, joy, love, unity and holiness – the same spiritual reality – that the early Christians did. If believers in miracles read the miraculous parts with an honest heart, we will likewise admit that we don’t see many miracles in our lives, and we have no good excuse for it.

Compared to the Kingdom of God and your part in it, does anything else you’re doing really matter? What should you do now? Should you turn off your computer? Weep? Repent? Click on a different link? Get a drink? We all have answers and goals. But most of the time, we’re answering the wrong questions, and reaching the wrong goals, like a Roman father in Pompeii who finishes remodeling the family room just before Mt. Vesuvius buries it in ashes. When we don’t know God’s will, we have to fill in the gaps with our own will and ideas. Or we can’t live. The alternative is to know God’s will.

Try this experiment: read the Bible as if you were an outsider. Pretend that these scriptures belong to a now-extinct sect that many admire but nobody follows. Imagine that someone loaned them to you and that you have no claim of understanding or even believing them. For once, don’t assume that you have the right to be encouraged by every encouraging word within their covers.
Continue reading “Now, pretend you’re a heathen.”

“Do not be satisfied with as much Christianity as will only ease your conscience.”

– J. B. Stoney

The Bible is most often read like a greeting card, whose only purpose is to warm the heart regardless of whether or not its sentiments apply to you. We bend the meaning of the Scripture to fit our own experience. When the Bible describes how God’s people must live, instead of asking, “Am I one of God’s people? Is that how I live?” we declare, “Since I am one of God’s people, that is how I live.” That we may not be part of God’s people is not considered a possibility.
Continue reading “Coming to God as an outsider”

If your fiancee loved you as much as you love God, would you call off the wedding?

– T.K. Soho

Man’s trust in himself has drawn him to the cities, where you can have food by paying for it without having to pray for rain, where you can ignore God’s judgment on you because you spend all your time with others who are ignoring the same thing. In the Third World, millions are moving from the country to the city, creating the world’s largest slums. Not that there’s more food in the city; after all, you can’t raise much wheat on concrete. Though in the Western world, many people are now moving from the city to the nearby country, it is not necessarily in repentance or dependence on God. They keep the city in their hearts even while God’s creation is before their eyes.

More people are afraid of dentists than they are of death. Maybe that’s because they believe dentists are more real than death. As much as possible, we want death to be handled by institutions such as hospitals and mortuaries. Otherwise we might have to face our own mortality.

Ironically, after years of sending medical workers to developing regions to teach that sicknesses are not caused by spirits, the western world has to admit that its own medical problems are overwhelmingly caused by spirits. It is because of their spiritual needs that Westerners engage in destructive behavior such as the use of mood-altering drinks and drugs, or overeating or oversmoking, or sexual promiscuity or perversion, or acts of violence. Call the problem low spirits, high spirits, or evil spirits. It isn’t treatable medically.