Gadfly's Muse

The Purpose of Creation - "Left Behind?" - Forget about it......

[Seattle, 2010, DCJohanson]

Isaiah 45:18   For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: "I am the LORD, and there is no other. 

I sometimes wish that Christians would get as excited about Scripture, and be as much shaped by Scripture, as by the stuff they pick up in the book store.

Like the writings of Frank Peretti ("Piercing the Darkness", ... etc.) the "Left Behind" series of Christian novels has had a decided impact on the way Christians view the world and things in it.   There are significantly good things that have come from this.  Peretti managed to alert people to the Biblical idea of spiritual warfare and conflict in an unforgettable manner.  Similarly Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have reawakened Christians to the vitality of eschatology.  Spiritual warfare and eschatology are non-negotiables as far as the truths of the Christian world view are concerned.  Anything that awakens Christians from their slumbers and luke-warm approaches to these topics can be much appreciated.

But there is a downside.  The demands of fictional narrative can lead an author into some fairly severe misrepresentations of these things.  In Peretti's case, the over-done metaphors, unlike Lewis' Screwtape Letters got blurred with reality and in some cases the sovereignty of God slid dangerously toward an un-biblical dualism.  Satan and his forces were not portrayed as being on a leash, subject always to the undeviating plan God has for His people and for His creation (cf. Job 1).

In the "Left-Behind" series, many Christians buy into this idea of a "rapture" which promotes the notion that for Christians this physical world is "not my home."  The physical earth is left to those who are "left behind".  First class citizens, 'true Christians', have no eternal business in this world and therefore should long to be shed of it as soon as possible, preferably with out going through the unhappy inconvenience of physical death. 

Not so....  From Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, God's word declares that Creation is good and is longing for its own redemption, for the day when its goodness is again illuminated and allowed to shine freely without the suffering pall of man's sin hindering its glory.  God created the world to be inhabited!  One day heaven will be joined to earth. In other words,  the unhappy veil that hides the reality of the spiritual dimension from the eyes of those who inhabit the merely physical will be ripped asunder and the consummation of the marriage of these two dimensions, already accomplished in the Person of Jesus Christ, will be celebrated without any shadow or obscurity.  We do not leave the earth "behind"... we join, in glorious union, the cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1)  who even now constitute the audience for the drama of history.  We don't go "out there"... we gain our spiritual sight, our spiritual senses, our spiritual humanity in its fullness.... but we remain "here."  This is called "glorification" and it will indeed be an astonishment.  We shall know even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12) and from that point on, there will be nothing to cry about.  

So, the next time you see the soft outlines of a glorious mountain juxtaposed with the sharp edges of human habitation... or you are perched between the starry sky above and the pin-points of city lights shining like diamonds on dark velvet below, remember... these are not mutually opposing beauties... nor must humanity be a blight on the created order.  This is our home... and our goal is to make it more beautiful by our presence in it.  Thus God has decreed... thus shall it be... God has formed the earth to be inhabited.

"Is There Not A Lie In My Right Hand?" - There are none so blind as he who will not see

[boy&pond, 2005, JAVanDevender]

Isaiah 44:20   20 He feeds on ashes; A deceived heart has turned him aside; And he cannot deliver his soul, Nor say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

Isaiah 44 contains some of the most hilarious, sarcastic and simultaneously sad commentary on the human condition that has ever been penned on paper.  With exquisite irony and laugh-out-loud imagery, God through Isaiah roasts the tom-foolery which is idol worship.  How can you take a tree trunk, use half of it to heat your house, cook your food and otherwise provide for you needs, and then take the other half and carve an idol to worship on bended knee?  What astonishing lunacy!

The answer to "how" one can be so silly is readily apparent.  Isaiah says that a person's deceived heart has turned him aside... he is so blind he cannot really even see what is lying in his own right hand.  The piece of wood that is cast into the fire is somehow distinguished from that part made into an idol, not based on objective reason, but on purely subjective grounds.  This.... this is 'holy'... that, that is profane.  How silly can one be...  I am reminded of the scene in "Zoolander" where the villain cries out in frustration... "Don't you see?  It's the same face!"  (You have to see the movie - parental discretion required)

It is not only the ancient idolaters that have or had this problem.  We all stand on the fence, look out over the pond of our lives, and like the little boy, choose something to look at and become fascinated with it and devote attention to it to a degree all out of proportion to its true worth.  We pass over our relationship with other people, our spouse, our kids, our neighbors, because we are obsessed with something we think is so important that it and it alone requires our attention.  We elevate Mammon to lord of our life and in do doing we turn aside from the self-evident witness of the Kingdom of God.  We choose sterility as we walk through fecund valleys.

All of this is grounded in our "deceived heart."  We are powerless against our own nature.  We are totally dependent on a sovereign God to take pity on us, deliver us from our blindness, open our eyes, and enable us to see the beauty that is all about us. 

God goes on to say in the next few verses, "O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me!.... return to Me, for I have redeemed you."  It is the grace of God to open blind eyes and remove the curse of idolatrous foolishness from our senses.  All through the redemption purchased on a piece of wood...

To Whom Will You Liken Him? ... In What Sense Do We... Can We... Know God?

[GoldenBarnMorning, 2008, JAVanDevender]

Isaiah 40:17-18   17 All nations before Him are as nothing, And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.  18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

In every confident discussion of religion, whether among sober academics or among the alcohol emboldened wags at the local bar, there is an underlying, occasionally deadly, arrogance involved.  No matter how much we think we know about God, the only things we can know about Him are those things which He has illustrated to us in and through the created framework of our narrow little perspective.

Every human conception of God, as eternal and undefiled, actually detracts from the truth of His Person even as it says something true about Him.  We know that in the Incarnation, in Jesus, the Human Nature which God the Son assumed, we have the fullest revelation of God as He is.  But Jesus, the Incarnate Son, is in one sense different than God the Father... He is both God and Man.  In Him we are able to see Humanity Glorified and Perfected.  But we do not see God Perfected.  The Perfection of the Trinity is inclusive and eternal.  The Trinity comprehends the incarnate Son and yet, because in His Humanity, He is truly human, He is still us!  So, there is a sense in which the fullness of the Deity dwells, and yet there is also the sense in which the whole is greater than the part. 

The sum of it is this, when it comes to God and His Being, His essence, we humans have nothing to which to liken Him.  He is beyond all earthly imagining because we cannot think except in terms that have some material analogy.  Even when we think of infinity we represent it with a "lazy eight" because otherwise we have no conception... it remains an incomprehensible abstraction.

All this is to say that we ought to be a lot more humble than we are when it comes to God and talking about Him and invoking Him and taking His Name upon our lips.  Our knowledge of Him is truly a grain of sand upon the scale (Isaiah 40:15).  What He has revealed is true... it is sufficient for us and our salvation such that we are thoroughly equipped for every good work (2Ti. 3:15-17), but it is nothing  compared to His Person.  We truly don't know what we are talking about... and much of our confidence is vanity. 

When we speak with such certainty about God... about what He wants... about what He is doing... about how He certainly agrees with us in the matter of our opinions... the sounds we make are like the background static on the radio or stereo set.  You have to turn up the volume really loud to even hear it... and then when God speaks.. the windows shatter.

Even Though He Be A Fool.....

[Scarecrow, 2008 JAVanDevender]

Isaiah 35:8   8 A highway shall be there, and a road, And it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, But it shall be for others. Whoever walks the road, although a fool, Shall not go astray

In this I imagine that I am not entirely different than others. There are occasions when, with blinding clarity, I remember some occasion wherein I behaved or spoke with such extraordinary foolishness that I shake my head in embarrassment at the mere thought.

Even the passing of decades cannot atone for such memories.  We humans are capable of doing the dumbest things.  In some of those instances I was blissfully ignorant of the degree of my own stupidity.  At other times it became hotly evident right away.  The problem is, like the law of the Medes and Persians, a foolish act can never be rescinded.  It's there... written on the stone tablet of history and our memories, to bear witness against us forever.

If I consider the highway of my own life, what I see more than anything else is the hidden hand of God acting even in my foolishness, and perhaps because of it.  It was He Who bounded that foolishness such that limits were maintained and my own destruction avoided.  Furthermore, looking back on some of the more tortured and flaky stretches of road, it was the unrelenting pressure of the teaching I had received from His Scriptures and from the Sunday School teaching and preaching, that constituted the padded against which I bounced.  This was not of me.  It was God using the Highway of Holiness of which Isaiah speaks keeping this fool from taking one or all of the branching paths which would have lead to disaster.  The fool doesn't stay on the right road because of his wisdom - if such were the case he would not be a fool.  The fool stays on the right road because God works in and through the circumstances of his life and is the constant nagging voice of a back seat driver saying "Not that way... get back on the main road."

And I suppose, the consuming shame of some of those memories is His voice still... reminding me of what I have learned, so that whatever foolishness I pursue now, at least it is brand new stuff, not repeats of the old.

OK, God... thanks for being there... from the old fool You were pleased to save from his foolishness.

Passing The Torch - The Decline of the So-Called "Religious Right"

[Bonsai in Bloom, 2008, JAVanDevender]

Isaiah 30:8-11   8 Now go, write it before them on a tablet, And note it on a scroll, That it may be for time to come, Forever and ever:  9 That this is a rebellious people, Lying children, Children who will not hear the law of the LORD;  10 Who say to the seers, "Do not see," And to the prophets, "Do not prophesy to us right things; Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.  11 Get out of the way, Turn aside from the path, Cause the Holy One of Israel To cease from before us." 

It's showing up often in the media.  The next generation of Christian leaders and voters are coming into their own and they are, as is so often mentioned, "thinking for themselves."

A typical quote: (read the entire article HERE)

A larger number of younger Christians are no longer "two-issue voters" who vote based only on their stances on abortion and gay marriage, said Debra Mason of the Center on Religion and the Professions.  ...This wide range of concerns shows that this year's faith vote may not be as clear-cut as it has been in the past.

"You have to set this generation at where this generation is in time," ..... All across the globe, in very real ways, they see poverty and the effects of genocide and pain beyond our borders."  ..."This is a global generation."

I have absolutely no issue with the next generation "taking over" nor am I wringing my hands and saying that the sky is falling because of it.  I applaud the intention to "think for themselves" (within certain limitations) and that they see wider issues of justice as being legitimate spheres of discussion.  Yea and Amen!  My most fundamental reaction is "it's about time."

However, there is also a caution that must be advanced and one which I hope these young Turks can appreciate and give due consideration.  It's one thing to say that "we are no longer 'two-issue' voters", it's another to relegate central and specific concerns like the issues of abortion and homosexual marriage to the status of "one among many" and thereby fail to appreciate that Christians must always distinguish some issues as being of a "more pressing" urgency and others as being "serious questions where progress need be initiated and sustained."

It is simply human nature to respond to an overwhelming number of problems by either (1) throwing up our hands and saying "it's too big", or (2) distinguishing between the problems and assigning levels of priority in addressing them.  The latter method is the pathway of progress.  The former method is the pathway of defeat.

There is little doubt that the overwhelming problem facing our culture is one of vision or, perhaps better, self-identity.  As a community, we are more characterized by what we don't like, what we are against, than what we are for.  In the passage from Isaiah above, God pronounces judgment on a people who once knew what they were for, who had a taste of what it meant to live in covenant with God, and who now stood in adamant rejection of Him and of His laws.  When a community or society rejects a fundamental sense of purpose for living, a barely conscious but never-the-less powerful orientation toward living that posits a higher purpose than their individual comfort, then lawlessness builds on lawlessness until all rule of law, including God's law, is seen as an infringement on personal liberty.

No issues highlight this trend more than those of unrestricted abortion and the battle over the moral status of homosexuality.  I exhort and plead with those who are on the rise:  take time to think through the fundamentals, the essential principles, the organizing concepts which constitute a truly Biblical life and world view.  You are right to question whether previous generations, especially mine, have had their priorities in the right place, but do not, just assume that all that has been passed down to you need be tossed out the window and that you must start from scratch.  Criticize, yes... dismiss out of hand, no.

And may God establish you and confirm you in every spiritual blessing.

How To Eat A Live Frog......

You have to swallow it whole!

(Outbuilding, Covenant Village, 09-08-08, JAVanDevender)

Isaiah 28:9-12   " Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts?  For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little."  For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people,  To whom He said, "This is the rest with which You may cause the weary to rest," And, "This is the refreshing"; Yet they would not hear.

It's often a struggle.... leaning into the times.  The old building in the picture is standing straight, yet it appears to be to out of kilter with its surroundings.  The slope of the hill is against it just we experience as we seek to stand straight against the pressure to conform to the lie of the land around us. 

Isaiah spoke to a generation which, for all practical purposes, was devoid of understanding... like babies just weaned from milk when it comes to really seeing what was happening in the world and what was truly important and what was wise and what was not.  He speaks to how difficult it was to communicate to them, to warn them, to alert them to the truth.  Like babies they saw the world through simplified, me-focused eyes.  Their days consisted in crying for something to eat, stamping their feet in anger when they didn't get their way, insisting on being the center of attention, jealously refusing to share their toys with others.  How does one speak to such a generation?

When he attempted to point out particular things that were wrong... as he brought God's word to bear on specific issues - greed, violence, etc. - all they heard was a series of "rules" - 'precept upon precept, line upon line'.  Isaiah's message was filtered through their own simplistic hearing.  "He is telling me to be different... to stop doing something I want to do... and it's all just a bunch of rules..."  The inevitable result, as he mentions, is that they stopped listening at all.  They sealed their own fate because, thinking themselves wise they became fools.

It is a heart rending situation and one that is very near descriptive of much of our world today.  The Christian message gets filtered through the 'me-focused' ears of those who don't want to change their lives and it comes across as just a bunch of rules.  The inevitable question we face is then - "why should I agree with YOUR rules?  If you want to live that way, you go right ahead, but don't throw your old rule book at me and expect me to buy into it."

Isaiah's experience and our own does highlight a serious point.  Christians cannot present their message to the world incrementally, a little bit at a time, seeking to change one little facet of the culture at a time by preaching or proclaiming one "rule" at a time.  We will not win the battle by becoming a "one-issue" political sect - even if it is something so important as abortion or same sex marriages.  There are legitimate grounds for advocating legal approaches to those issues that are consistent with Biblical teaching on the subjects - but that will not transform the society or produce dramatic results.  By themselves, laws will always come down to "precept upon precept, line upon line"... just a multiplication of rules.  If you think that will work on these issues, go out on the highway and watch people drive - see how the multiplication of rules actually produces a disrespect for any rules at all.

In order to stand against the slope, Christians have to proclaim a message of "swallowing the frog whole."  The individual laws of God, the rules of righteous living, only make sense and only have a compelling authority, when the "whole frog" of God's Kingdom is swallowed.  The sanctity of human life and its inherent value cannot be ultimately argued apart from the idea of "image-bearing."  Marriage between one man and one woman is just a rule unless the presupposition of "one-flesh" is accepted.  Above it all stands the idea of "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" wherein a person's life is ordered in such a manner as to be yielded to God's ways in gratitude for His marvelous works of grace.

Whether it is with our kids or our neighbor across the street or the co-worker with whom we are sharing a coffee break... we need to remember... it's about rules... but not just rules upon rules upon rules.  It is about the Kingship of our Redeemer who has ordered this universe in righteousness and glory... and the rules make sense only when we swallow that idea whole.

When It All Makes Sense.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRR3IueMNIE

God was in His heaven and all on the world was understandable, even if, as depicted in the art of Hieronymus Bosch, it consisted of a razor sharp moral line between the pathway to heaven and descent into the impossible to imagine horrors of Hell.

Though life was, in the words of the much later English bard, "nasty, brutish and short", it was not incomprehensible.  The first buds of the Renaissance had opened ancient thoughts on music, art, medicine, math and philosophy.  Theistic presuppositions were virtually indisputable.  Therefore, faith was the prerequisite for understanding but also the instrument by which it was possible.  Everywhere the cosmos presented testimony of harmony above and against the strident clamor of discord.  Somehow, it all made sense.

Thus in the marvelous polyphony of Josquin des Prey and others the separate strands of flowing music and rhythms intersected to produce harmonious chords.  The separate strands of life, like the glorious tapestries of the time, weave in and out of each other, touching and interacting in such a way as to produce beauty beyond the individual contribution.  Only God could see the full tapestry or hear the whole melody, but man could reproduce the effect and at least for a brief moment, transcend the blood, muck, gore and sordidness of which much of his life consisted, and be transported into the sphere of ideals, the contemplation of purity and perfection.

For all its faults and ignorance, a certain nostalgia is inescapable.  The enlightenment removed, perhaps forever, the hope which characterized that time and man, for all his advances since, is in one respect the more impoverished.  In all our striving and specialization, we discover that what we miss is the freedom to be at peace... whether in poverty or a castle.

It's Tough To Make Predictions... Especially About The Future! (Yogi Berra)

(Beach, Ocean City, MD Oct 2005, JAVanDevender)

Isaiah 22:12-13  And in that day the Lord GOD of hosts Called for weeping and for mourning, For baldness and for girding with sackcloth.   But instead, joy and gladness, Slaying oxen and killing sheep, Eating meat and drinking wine: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!"

Matthew 16:2-3   He answered and said to them, "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red';  "and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.

When it comes to wisdom, you can't go far wrong with Yogi Berra.  It is tough making predictions... and sometimes, I think, we get so turned off by those few who make predictions and have them turn out so egregiously wrong (anyone remember Y2K or Howard Camping's 1994) that we kind of give up trying to discern any patterns or impending possibilities in developing events.  When this happens we tend to "just live for the moment..." because that is all we have... and we give no thought to tomorrow, because, after all, tomorrow will take care of itself.

In the Isaiah passage above, the ancient Israelites did just that kind of thing.  The darkening forces of rising Assyrian power and the aggressive policies of that vicious people were as the gathering wind on a beach whistling in before the clouds on the horizon.  Anyone with eyes to see could tell that it was a time for sackcloth and ashes, for weeping and mourning before the Lord, for cautious politics and sincere seeking of Divine assistance.  It was a time of turning from the comforts of false prosperity and for making self-sacrificing choices in preparation for stern times.

But that was too much to ask.  Rather, like ostriches burying their heads in the sand, those ancients just went about their pleasurable ways and hoped for the best.  Some even took the philosophical approach... "if it happens, it happens... let's eat, drink and be merry, while we can.. for tomorrow we die."

Jesus clearly taught that people should pay attention to the signs that are given them... that with wisdom of experience, knowledge of history, penetration of insight and an overall sense of responsibility for the future, they should conduct themselves appropriately and seek to respond to the direction of developing events.

Today, from my perspective, our culture has much in common with those Israelites.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist (why are they considered so smart?) to plot the general trajectory of developing events.  Hard times appear to be coming.  Monetary policies over the past few years and currently accelerating, will come home to roost... taxes and/or inflation will make life difficult.  Trends in violence will accelerate as the culture of lawlessness breaks through the thin cordon of police boundaries in the inner cities and commences to ravage the virtually unprotected suburbs.  The inexcusable prevalence of teenage pregnancies (see HERE) forebodes an entire generation of children growing up without even a mature role-model and most often without any knowledge of domestic stability on which to gauge their own relationships.

It is tough to make predictions... but it is irresponsible and stupid not to make preparations for eventualities or to take steps to counter trends.  Christians and anyone else with eyes to see should be undertaking distinct strategies and actions to be a lighthouse on the shore.  Although inflation plays havoc with the value of accumulated savings, yet it is better to have devalued funds than none at all.  Christians should be learning the disciplines of frugality, restraint and self-sufficiency.  We should be returning to core values of family, family meals, extended conversations (no cell phones allowed) with friends and kids, and other forms of mutual bonding which will provide the support networks that may be needed soon.  We need to renew our view of the church as outpost.... shelter ..... and source of supply as we learn to face circumstances depending on mutual loyalty.

There is much we can do but it requires dramatic, indeed revolutionary alteration in our thinking and ordering of priorities.  "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" is the slogan of a loser... Yogi Berra was no loser.  "It's not over till it's over" is our cry and we remain in the game.

The Nagging Fact of "Why?".....

Genesis 1:1-3  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. Neither of them need I seek and merely suspect as if shrouded in obscurity or rapture beyond my own horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with my existence.

Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries"

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers

No matter how much they wiggle and thrash about, like fish on a line, those who seek to view the universe through the narrow lens of materialism (or scientific positivism or empiricism) simply cannot escape the inadequacy of their position.  All the facts cannot be explained by mere physical cause and effect.

To me, it is the "why?" issue.  The modern progressives, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, desire to restrict the realm of "why" to physical cause and effects.  They think people do things, like thinking, because of some physical process that generates thought.  Any question that reaches beyond the "why" of physical causes is deemed "unscientific" and therefore should not be seriously considered.  In short, "what is.... is" and that is all there is to it.

There are at least two basic questions though which seriously undermine the logical validity of such narrow thought.  First - What was the "first cause" of all that "is", and two - how does one explain the fact that human beings ask "why?"

Modern progressives generally accept the "big bang" theory of universal cosmology.  When pressed about why things are as they are, the general causal regression goes back to that finite point and halts.  It is admitted as integral to the theory that there is no explanation for why the infinitesimally small infinitely dense point undertook to go "bang."  The mathematics require that an anomaly occurs, or if you prefer, a discontinuity - during which the laws of physics simply do not apply. 

Now, at this point when it begins to be apparent that the most ready explanation for this "discontinuity" is one of supernatural intrusion, the progressive is quick to say "no."  They will explain that though we don't understand the laws of physics as they existed during the discontinuity, yet, with infinite optimism to match the infinite magnitude of the intellectual leap, they posit that "in time we will understand them."  What this line of thinking blindly ignores is the entirely different and impossible to attain, sphere of investigation which would enable such future knowledge to be attained.  If a circumstance, the events which transpired during the discontinuity, is governed by a different set of physical laws than those which govern present investigation, then the only means by which a causal explanation could be offered is that some knowledge of how those different laws operate be understood.  To do so would require hypothesis and investigation, experimentation under those set of laws.  The environment or physical framework which existed during the discontinuity would have to be tested which would require man's ability to transform from one entire set of physical laws to another. This would not only prove that there is a God... this would require man to be God.

There is a "framework" if you so allow which does describe the realm of causality which lies outside of the physical laws of our universe and transcends them.  It is the causal framework encapsulated in the words "God spoke... and it was so."  There is an alternate and ultimate sphere of causation which is Personal and entirely Self-Sufficient.  There is no epistemological chasm in Theist thought.

The second great question on which empiricist progressives founder is the self-evident fact on mankind himself.  Man is a being who asks "why?"  Darwinian evolution is helpless to provide a mechanism to explain how this feature began to develop and under what circumstances it proved so meritorious to the preservation of the species that it was promoted at the expense of others.

Yes, there are some general ideas about the "social consciousness" of primates that then began to translate from individual survival to group survival characteristics, but at no point is there any logical connection which demonstrates how the earliest stages of such thinking might have been noticed, communicated and then valued by others, such that it began to be a self-perpetuated eugenic design, a hybridization, if you will, undertaken by the group. 

What is self-evident, as Chesterton famously advanced, is that the human being, from the earliest evidence we possess, demonstrated a rather profound religious, and hence moral, consciousness.  The progressives usually explain this as an indication of the need to explain things which happened, i.e. the advent of animalism, superstitions, etc. to explain why water flowed in rivers and why lightning strikes and such.  There is a superficial plausibility to the argument, right up to the point of considering "why" did the ancient barbarian require an explanation.  The fish don't really care why the water flows in the river though their very lives depend on it.  The foxes and the deer run from the location where the lightning strikes but they do not ponder if there is some relation between the occurrence and some action, some right or wrong thing, that they themselves did.

Progressives cannot allow this question its true weight.  If "what is... is" then "what is... is" that man has a self-motivated passion for asking "why" and then assigning a high value to the answer.  Man's history is often the result of "why" questions being asked and certain answers advanced.  If man is a creature who asks "why" then how can this be explained?  If there is a "missing link" in the chain for developing species that yields continuity in the external physicality of man to the earlier stages of evolution, then there is a "missing chasm" between the functioning of non-human life forms and humans in metaphysical curiosity.

The simplest explanation is that man is the result of a dramatically different design process and is oriented toward dramatically different life goals.  Christians call this "bearing the image of God" and its end is toward dominion over all the other creatures - an end which simply could not be attained if man was not such that he wonders "why?"

The nagging fact of "why?" is a serious and to my mind, insurmountable obstacle to all who seek to stop short of their own human potential and limit themselves only to empirical lines of thought.

Alcohol Abuse And America

Isaiah 5:11-12   Woe to those who rise early in the morning, That they may follow intoxicating drink; Who continue until night, till wine inflames them! The harp and the strings, The tambourine and flute, And wine are in their feasts; But they do not regard the work of the LORD, Nor consider the operation of His hands.

(sunrise, Dec 02, 2005, Severn Run E. P. Church)

Alcohol is now the number one drug problem in America. An estimated 43 percent of Americans have been exposed to alcoholism in the family, and alcohol-related problems cost our economy at least $100 million in healthcare and productivity losses. This trend makes alcohol addiction the number one health crisis today both in the US and in more than forty countries worldwide.

quoted from Alcohol Abuse in America

And if those numbers weren't bad enough, there is the problem of teen age drinking.  One report I saw (but cannot remember where) said that by the time they finish high school, 80% of young people have been introduced to serious alcohol consumption, either occasionally or often.  Alcohol abuse is a serious problem and Christians are not immune to it.

As a young man in the hard-charging, equally hard-drinking culture of Naval Aviation, I was no stranger to alcohol consumption.  It was part of the culture and considered a pre-requisite to the warrior ethos.  But at some level, I always knew that it was a rattle snake waiting to strike.  I had watched alcoholism destroy my dad, stripping him of the extraordinary potential he possessed and reducing him to a degree of self-pity that left him no room for pride or companionship.  That example probably kept me from going down a path that many other aviators traveled in those days.

It makes you wonder what is the appeal of it?  The scriptures commend the idea of feasting and making merry, and wine is considered a blessing.  Certainly God does not condemn its proper use.  But what is the dynamic that carries us beyond the blessing and into the curse of alcohol.  Where does it become 'demon rum'?  Over long years of dealing with people who are miserably subject to compulsive drinking or drug use, I think the common denominator is 'despair.'

The passage from Isaiah describes an alcohol abuser.  He (or she) rises early in the morning so that they may "follow intoxicating drink."  Their life revolves around the bottle.  It is ready beside them and apart from it they find life unbearable.  They may not realize it very clearly, but drinking is the way they avoid living.... at least in the real world, where people are difficult, jobs can be boring, children can be disappointing, elders and teachers unreasonable, and where the gray pall of suffering impinges on every sense.

To the degree that this admittedly over-simplified analysis is true, it is easy to see that the reason why people become alcoholics or drug addicts or compulsive anythings, is because they do not see God in the world around them.... they do not see beauty in their lives, nor do they find comfort in the Almighty.  According to Isaiah "they do not regard the work of the LORD nor consider the operation of His hands."  Now, I know this is not how Isaiah intended these words, but this is one way true way to view them anyway. 

If we see the world through eyes which "regard the work of the LORD" we will discover that He is not absent in all those things which drive us to drink.  He is not removed from our relationships, He is not absent from our pain, He has not given up on us nor in those situations we face.  And if He is there, present in all those things, then there is hope, joy is possible and courage can be restored.  In other words, life is not to be despaired of.... and therefore the bottle is preventing life instead of enabling it.

Somehow or another, in every case I have encountered, where a person subject to addictive behavior has won victory over it, it is because they have discovered that life outside their addiction IS in fact better than life inside it.  The problem with alcohol abuse in America is first and foremost a problem of the spirit... and not medicine.