Flesh vs Faith Part 5: The Call of Abraham

Posted on September 9, 2010 by xulonjam

You lived 175 years and never went beyond faith – Søren Kierkegaard.

In the series up to now, I have defined Faith and Flesh. Faith, I said, is an active response to God’s revelation, of living trust that what God says matters – no matter how things may seem. I looked at the beginning of the flesh in its self-assertion, telling the Creator “we will not have you rule over us.” I looked at three OT pictures of the commitments of the flesh and at three NT passages concerning the believer’s struggle with the flesh and the antidote of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, like Adam in the garden, the life of Faith is a life of dependence, trusting the Creator. Continue reading →

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Flesh vs Faith Part 4: The Antidote

Posted on September 3, 2010 by xulonjam

In the previous blog, I wrote about what is called The Fall. My idea is that the account found in Genesis 3 is a rebellion of the creation against the order of the Creator. I wrote, quoting CS Lewis, that the eating of the fruit was man tearing off a corner of the universe and saying to the creator “this is my business and none of yours”. The problem with that is the creation has no place that is not the business of the Creator. As I showed previously, even within the responsibility given to man (tending the garden) there is an unabated underlying dependence on the Creator (don’t eat from this tree in the garden. That is, it is the Creator who has business that is none of the creation’s).

Adam’s assertion of self as independent of the Creator results in what is called The Flesh, which has the same commitment. The three pictures I mentioned from the Old Testament showed that man in his flesh chooses what makes sense to his self-interests rather than look to the Creator (found in Isaiah 50:10,11); that he sees what God offers and turns away to work on a pathetically poor substitute of his own making (Jeremiah 2:13); and that when he has built that poor substitute, he whitewashes it so that it looks better (Ezekiel 13:10). What strikes me about these pictures, besides their clear incongruities, is how natural they all seem, quite in keeping with what I observe in humanity and, if I’m honest, in my own heart. I am selfish and self-serving and I frequently wish God would mind his own business. Continue reading →

Posted in Biblical Studies, Culture/Society, Ethics, Flesh vs Faith, Spirituality | 2 Comments

Flesh vs Faith Part 3: The Rebellion

Posted on August 29, 2010 by xulonjam

In the previous blog, I spent some time working on a definition of Flesh. I Quoted Dr Lawrence, who wrote that flesh is “that anti-God, self-reliant aspect of all human beings (saved and unsaved alike) that is the seat of sin, engaged in unremitting resistance to the Holy Spirit.” From there, I turned to the biblical picture that God is the Creator and we are the creation. This has ramifications concerning the nature of our relationship with God. The aspect I keyed on was dependence. The blog ended in Genesis 2 with that relationship created and intact. Continue reading →

Posted in Biblical Studies, Culture/Society, Ethics, Flesh vs Faith | 4 Comments

Flesh vs Faith Part 2: The Creator

Posted on August 27, 2010 by xulonjam

In the first blog, I spent some time defining Faith. Here, I will start with a quick definition of Flesh. The words translated “flesh” (Hebrew, basar; Greek, sarx) have as their basic meaning the physical body. They also both are used in metaphorical sense for the whole person (of which the physical is just a part), human frailty (“he is but flesh”), the transitory nature of the physical (flesh is grass) and also kinship (descendant of David according to the flesh Romans 1:3). In Ezekiel 36:26, God promises that he will give us a heart of flesh (flesh is used as a positive notion of tenderness and sensitivity towards God). The word is used for all of humanity (all flesh) and, of course, the Word was made flesh. Significantly, the Bible does not accept or teach the Greek philosophers’ idea that sarx is inherently evil. Even though the inherent evilness of the flesh is a strong semantic use of the Greek word in its etymology, it is not to be found in the biblical usage. When John says the Word was made flesh there is no thought that the Word was made evil. Continue reading →

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Unite My Heart

Posted on August 14, 2010 by xulonjam

Psalm 86:11 Unite my heart to fear thy name.

The Psalmist’s prayer is that his heart be united in fear of God. Isn’t that what we want? A single focus which never deviates, around our creator who is worthy of our complete devotion. This brings up an obvious question, “what divides your heart?”. It’s an obvious question with an equally obvious answer, Life. Life divides my heart. Life clamors and disrupts. In your meditations, you learn of God’s will and his ways as much as you are able but as soon as you leave your room something is screaming for your attention and all of your being tells you that you would be an absolute fool if you did not devote all your attention right here right now. Continue reading →

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Faith: The Substance

Posted on August 12, 2010 by xulonjam

I had been thinking of doing a series titled Flesh vs Faith which I will get to eventually, but I thought I’d spend some time defining faith because of a recent discussion on Faith and Doubt. My reason for this includes there is common picture that faith is mainly a “wishful thinking” or “positive thinking” thing. This comes into issue from a couple of directions. Continue reading →

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Dawkins Four Years Later Part 4

Posted on August 8, 2010 by xulonjam

This is my fourth (and last) article on Dr Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Here are my thoughts on reading Chapter 5 The Roots of Religion.

As I approached this chapter, the question I wanted to see if Dawkins were to explore was why there is no atheistic society. I have asked that of skeptics, since they have argued that atheism is the out-of-the-womb default, much like ignorance of Calculus or our native tongue. If it were true that people are born atheists, then why are there no atheistic societies? Beyond that, those societies which decided to become atheistic had to do so by the force of the gun and even then, they just ran religion underground where it thrived. Once the officially enforced atheism stopped, belief in God was shown to have grown under the oppression, indicating “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” to be more true than “people need to throw off the shackles of religion.” Continue reading →

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Dawkins – Four Years Later Part 3

Posted on August 2, 2010 by xulonjam

This is part three of my interaction with Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. It deals with Chapter 4, Why There Almost Certainly is no God. This, Dawkins says, is the main conclusion of the book the rest being mainly mopping up operations. I will publish one more article, on chapter 5 as I think it deals with an important question: Where did religion come from, if evolution is true? If everything evolved, what evolutionary purpose does religion serve?

In chapter 4 Why There Almost Certainly is no God, Dawkins uses as his proof a variation on a creationist favorite, The 747. This line attributed to physicist Fred Hoyle is summarized, Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747 (p113). This is a creationist favorite (to my embarrassment many of the things he says are claimed by Christians are somewhat claimed by Christians, given Dawkins’ self-serving slants, fortunately what is true is true no matter how many ignoramuses one can quote supporting it.) which he adapts, what he calls the Ultimate 747, by noting that created things are less complex than those who create them (horseshoes do not make blacksmiths, but the other way around) so if god created, he must be more evolutionarily complex than what he created. Design is not a real alternative (explanation for life) at all because it raises an even bigger problem: who designed the designer? (p121) This, he says is an “infinite regress” and proof that it is unlikely god exists. He then uses this in subsequent questions to dismiss god as an answer. Design certainly does not work as an explanation for life … it takes us back along the Ultimate 747 infinite regress. (p141) Continue reading →

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Online Privacy

Posted on July 28, 2010 by xulonjam

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs is this article on online privacy. The obvious answer, of course, is to not post things you might regret sometime in your long, otherwise dull, life, but things being the way that they are in reality, other solutions are in the works.

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Dawkins Four Years Later: Part 2

Posted on July 26, 2010 by xulonjam

This is part 2 of my thoughts concerning Dr Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. I anticipate that there will be two more articles, the next being on Chapter 4, Why There is Almost Certainly No God and Chapter 5, The Roots of Religion. As Dr Dawkins says This (Chapter 4) is the main conclusion of the book so far. Various questions follow (p158), my interest in the book kind of wanes from there. I really am not that interested in the Crusades, or the Salem Witch Trials*, or Dawkins anachronistically claiming that all inhumanity in human history flows from its religions, while all nobility in human history had no connection with religion. Such special pleading is not solid reasoning, but a stacking of the deck and an outflow of Dawkins’ “anything but God” commitments.

In my previous article, I made the following observation concerning Dawkins’ approach to his subject: all Christians (or Jews or Muslims, as he makes no distinction between these groups …) are exactly like this. On page 36, he offers a justification for this. He says there is an inevitable retort to this book, one that would … – as surely as night follows day – turn up … ‘That God Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God I don’t believe in either …’ … This distraction is worse than irrelevant. Its very silliness is calculated to distract attention. To make sure the subject is properly focused, he adds: I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented. Continue reading →

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