Confessions of a wandering mind

Jesus is either a stumbling stone, or a rock you can build your life on. --Robert Morris http://gatewaypeople.com/watch/message-archives/individual

My mind has been all over the map in recent days.  Okay, now where was I?  Oh, yeah.

This morning I woke up to thoughts of justice, but how certain groups may get offended by injustice, and perpetrate lawless acts themselves as a result.  No justice, no peace.  We will riot in the streets until justice is done.  Know justice, know peace.  We will loot and plunder and steal and kill and destroy until we get our way.  Wait, what? Personally, I don't know if the ends justify the means, but that's just me.

Last night I was thinking about the philosophy of the origin of the Universe.  I am neither a scientist, nor a philosopher.  I am an amateur theologian, meaning I come to the idea of beginnings with certain presuppositions.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.  Scientists would scoff at me, because there is a great deal of physical, historical, and scientific evidence that I will ignore or lay aside because it does not fit my world view.  However, it seems to me that most scientists come to the table with their own set of presuppositions.  God cannot be considered in the equation, because He is not observable or provable.  Therefore, the only evidence that is considered is that which fits neatly into their scientific method.

For the last two days I have been working on a sort of poem about addictions and overcoming addictive behaviors.

Each second is a grain of sand,  

Each task a drop of water. 

Every thought is a single piece of straw.
Life consists of gathering our time, tasks, and thinking into little bricks called days.
Each struggle is like a kiln, hardening the bricks, 

so that they can be stacked together to make up a life. 

Stack up enough bricks, and you make a defense  

against falling back into old habits 

  against falling back into destructive patterns 

    against failing at life....

It's a work in progress; don't judge.

The thread that holds all of these disparate thoughts together is a sermon I heard this evening.  The text was the sixth commandment, Thou shalt not commit murder.  The theme, on the other hand, was love.  It almost sounds like the preacher was having a week like mine.  But here is how he built his case.  Murder is preceded by hate. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." (1 John 3:15).  Hate is preceded by anger. "...but for Cain and his offering the Lord had no regard.  So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell." (Genesis 4:5--the anger of Cain led to the first murder recorded in the Bible.)  An offense precedes anger. "And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another." (Matthew 24:10, NKJV).  Unfulfilled expectations precede offenses.   John the Baptist was in prison when Jesus came to Jerusalem, and John sent his disciples to Jesus with the question: Are you the Expected One, or should we look for another?  Jesus answered by performing many miracles, then sent back this message, "Blessed is he who does not take offense at me." (Luke 7:23).

Now, the Greek word that is translated "offense" is the term scandalon.  It is where we get the word "scandal".  The word has two meanings.  The first is "a snare."  It could be thought of as the stick that holds up the edge of a box; when a small animal comes to grab the bait, he will push aside that support, that scandalon, and be trapped.

Many people are trapped by the concept of justice.  A black man is killed by police.  The community is offended, because the police officer did not meet their expectations to protect and serve the community.  The community is angry.  Many in the community allow hatred to overcome them.  Hate leads to murder, or at least murderous oratory.  The same progression the preacher outlined above.  An unjustified killing of a member of their community leads to plotting murder of police officers.  "The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God." (James 1:20).  Murder begets murder, violence begets violence.  An eye for an eye, and all that.  This is scandalous.

A second meaning for the word scandalon is "a stumbling block."  Here is where I want to go back to my study of the origins of the Universe.  Noted seminary professor and Christian author R.C. Sproul, along with Keith Mathison (professor of systematic theology at Reformation Bible College), have recently released an updated and revised edition of Sproul’s book Not a Chance, first published in 1999.  This philosophically and theologically oriented book covers much of the same material that a Philosophy 101 or Logic 101 textbook might discuss. However, the parts that will interest our readers the most explore the evidence that the universe arose due to purposeful intelligent design, and a First Cause, rather than unguided chance
processes.  So how did the universe come to be? In a passage that is very helpful for framing the issue, they note that there are only four options for explaining the origin of the cosmos:

Option 1: The cosmos is an illusion; it doesn’t exist.
Option 2: The cosmos is self-existent (and eternal).
Option 3: The cosmos is self-created.
Option 4: The cosmos is created by something else that is self-existent. (p. 154)

Clearly, option 1 is false.  We are not illusory; we do exist.  Option 2 is refuted by leading scientists, whose consensus  is that the cosmos had a definite beginning: they call it "the Big Bang", and date it at approximately 15 billion years ago.  15 billion years is a very long time, but it is not, by definition, "eternity."  Option 3 is logically impossible, because in order for something to create itself, it would have to be in existence before it was itself created.  Option 4, then, is the only logical answer to the origin of the Universe.  God is that "something else that is self-existent."

Now, evolutionists would laugh at our little philosophical exercise, and point out that there is a lot of observable data that serves as evidence of a big bang and subsequent evolution of life on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere in the Universe.  They do not realize that the "evidence" they rely upon is random information that they are organizing, along with some opinions and presuppositions to come to their godless conclusions. If there were evidences of God, it must be discounted because it is not easily replicated.  I have myself seen irrefutable physical evidence that exists in a small riverbed in Glen Rose, Texas, showing footprints of men and of dinosaurs in the same rock strata.  Evolutionists set this evidence aside as unexplainable, an anomaly that doesn't fit their narrative.

"It is written, 'Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be put to shame." (Romans 9:33).  Modern science sees God as offensive, and Jesus as a stumbling block.  We Christians use that same scandalon as the cornerstone of our faith.  What is offensive to the World is foundational to our theology, our religion, and our world-view.

A better poem about the rock-solid nature of Jesus in our lives was penned by Michael Card in his song Scandalon:

The seers and the prophets had foretold it long ago
That the long awaited one would make men stumble
But they were looking for a king to conquer and to kill
Who'd have ever thought He'd be so meek and humble
Chorus
He will be the truth that will offend them one and all
A stone that makes men stumble
And a rock that makes them fall
Many will be broken so that He can make them whole
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul
Along the path of life there lies a stubborn Scandalon
And all who come this way must be offended
To some He is a barrier, To others He's the way
For all should know the scandal of believing
He will be the truth that will offend them one and all
A stone that makes men stumble
And a rock that makes them fall
Many will be broken so that He can make them whole
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul
It seems today the Scandalon offends no one at all
The image we present can be stepped over
Could it be that we are like the others long ago
Will we ever learn that all who come must stumble
He will be the truth that will offend them one and all
A stone that makes men stumble
And a rock that makes them fall
Many will be broken so that He can make them whole
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wf8OGTqiSw


By the way, the end of the sermon contrasted love with hate, and the final point in the sermon is that love is preceded by forgiveness.  To err is human, to forgive divine.  It is hard for a community to forgive a perceived injustice by those tasked with preserving justice.  It is hard for a scientist to forgive the religious for laying aside evidences until an alternative explanation can be found, one that has room for God in it.  Christians, on the other hand, should find it easier to love and to forgive, since we are loved and forgiven by the One who came from Heaven to live on Earth, to die for our sins, and then to be raised from the dead by the power of God.