Random Thoughts on First Peter

Growing up in private Christian High School, I had to memorize my fair share of memory verses, including 1 Peter 5:8, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." I was always taught that it was only the old, toothless lions who roared, and this 'fact' was used by extension to belittle the real threat that the Enemy can sometimes pose to those who are not prepared. Now, I'm not here to argue how much Satan can or cannot harm us, I would just like to dispel the information I grew up with based on the Old Testament's own witness.

Today I was reading Proverbs 28, and I was struck by the couplet that verse 15 presented roaring lions with: As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people. What struck me is that here a roaring lion did not seem be a harmless thing at all. To the contrary, it seemed to be grouped with some pretty threatening stuff. So I wondered what else the Old Testament had to say about roaring lions. Were they harmless as I had been led to believe, all bark and no bite? Or were they something worth being wary of?

The most interesting thing I found was that oftentimes roaring lions were more completely described as young, roaring lions (Judges 14:5, Psalm 104:21, Isaiah 31:4, Jeremiah 2:15, etc). Additionally, like the parallelism of Proverbs 28, the couplets I found in the Old Testament did not present roaring lions as nonthreatening, but rather as intimidating (e.g. Proverbs 19:12, "The king's wrath is as the roaring of a lion... "; also Hosea 11:10, " He [the LORD] shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.").

So, contrary to what I had heard growing up, the concept of a roaring lion in the Bible is not one of an enfeebled attacker devoid of ability to do real harm, but rather one of real intimidation and consequence.

Well, that wraps up today's required dose of nerdiness. :) Not a complete treatise on Hebraic perceptions of roaring lions, but I hope the point is made well enough to dispose of the apocryphal information handed down to me.

Self

Epiphanies can come at the strangest times, and in the strangest places. Yesterday as I was leaving King’s Cross, my tube station, I was struck with the most trenchant insight I have received in ages: We are the only persons who can truly ever harm ourselves.

The Word tells us of mighty restoration – of our physical selves, sown into the grave in corruption raised to immortality through the first resurrection. The same too for our souls – John’s first epistle speaks of the mightiest of promises – that those who truly hope in Christ will “be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

So then, if our bodies and souls are promised perfection and immortality through the healing work of Christ’s atonement and resurrection, who then can ever truly harm us? Can men who harm our mortal frame? Can those who wound our hearts and souls ever do lasting damage?

It is in fact the case that they can never do us lasting harm. It is only we ourselves who can do that. It is only our intentions and our actions that can remove us from the grace of God and take us from His path of eternal life.

How much more should we therefore abundantly forgive our neighbor who can do us no real harm, even as we daily forgive ourselves our faults? Can we really hold our neighbor to a debt we know redemption will repay while we casually forgive or ignore our own and damning faults?

Radical Faith

Last night the Lord called me to have radical faith. He told me something was going to be ok, even WAS ok, and I didn't believe Him. All those stiff-necked, hard-hearted, blind, deaf, dumb predicates in the Old Testament? Yeah, that was me last night.

I wish I would have trusted God more. I wish I wouldn't have rebelled against the still, small voice that said, "Everything's going to be OK." I wish I would have listened to the words of Him who loves me and knows all, instead of connecting the dots in my own finitude and stupidity. I wish I would have placed my heart in His hands, and not let my own fears and insecurities snatch it away and play rugby with it.

But most of all I wish I would have realized this: Faith is not just resting in written promises, generally trusting in the goodness of God that He will work all things out for Good (though such things are of course true). It's more than just verses and eschatalogical hope. Sometimes faith is listening and believing God when you're staring at a blue wall and He's telling you it's red (believe me, He's always right). Sometimes it's forsaking all of our faculties and just trusting, giving up our rights of assessment and reaction and placing all of our attitudes, actions, reactions, thoughts, and feelings at His feet. It's being willing to say, "Lord, everything I know is telling me A, but You're telling me B and I trust you above everything else, so B it is." Sometimes faith flies in the face of all, and runs roughshod over it. But God's truth and faith in it always wins, even when it looks like the sorriest underdog there is.

Sometimes faith is just a general trust, a general hope, a gentle thing. But sometimes it's much more than that - it's radical, transcendent, and demands belief at the cost of disbelieving all else.

Primitive Logic

I stumbled upon this in my archives. I would classify this is as primitive theological logic in my conversion. Taken as an excerpt from an email:

Some Conclusions from Reading the Bible:

Jesus is the Son of God

Jesus died for our sins

Faith in Jesus and His atonement is vital for salvation

Works are vital for salvation (Luke 10, James 2, Revelation 20, etc)

The New Testament pictures God’s intention of one true community of believers being built up into the body of Christ, with apostles and prophets, teachers and evangelists being main means God has chosen to build up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4)

The New Testament (and to a lesser extent the Old Testament) also predicts a falling away from the truth and a need for the true community of believers to be re-established upon the Earth (Amos 8:11; Matthew 13:25, Acts 20:29, 2 Peter 2:1, 1 John 2, 4, etc, etc)

On the basis of number six alone (which I think history corroborates), all historical faiths are disqualified for me (Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox – basically everything before the Reformation), leaving (outside of the LDS Church) only the Protestant faiths, which I consider to be disqualified by numbers four and five (I think even based on the 20th century alone, even on my lifetime, it is easy to see Protestantism splintering again and again, the end result being a privatized almost lone-gunman faith when it comes to doctrinal decisions. I consider this to be the natural and inevitable fruits of the Reformation principle of ‘sola scriptura’ and the ‘priesthood of all believers’). Pretty much, the LDS church is the only one left standing, at least to present it simply from one perspective (there are about a dozen others). For the sake of simplicity, though, here are just six conclusions I’ve made from reading the Bible carefully and considerately.

The Necessity of Biblical Epistemology

The Necessity of Biblical Epistemology

(Not intended to be a definitive treatise, but instead the observations and reflections of a simple pilgrim of Zion)

The diversity of London continually provides a tide of philosophical challenge, which ebbs and flows, sometimes even crashes, against my worldview. As I stare into the faces of Bengalis, Buddhists, burka-clad women, businessmen and vintage New Wave rebels, I find my ideologies subtly challenged by the ones they represent , whether it be through cultural identification, speech, and even subconscious mannerisms. The way they interact with the world belies their beliefs and provides a foil of reflection against my own. Recently, I was struck by the philosophical integrity of Muslim extremists. Here were a group of people convinced that God (or Allah, for those of you who might be theological more conservative or reticent) dictated something not only extremely unpopular in the world’s eyes, but also time consuming and dangerous, not to mention lethal. And yet there are those in the world, who, despite such difficulties and hardships, carry out Allah’s commands.

As I contemplated the integrity undergirding the actions of Islamic extremists, my contemplation turned to evaluation of their actions and my assessment of their overall wrongness. At this point, I found my latent post-modern mindset rear its opinion. It leveled this against me: Who was I to say these zealots were wrong? Where did I get off imposing my sheltered and naïve Western world view on them?

At first I was slightly kowtowed by this accusation, but then I began to ponder epistemology and what basis I could claim to challenge the seemingly obvious misguided actions of our Muslim neighbors. It may seem obvious to you and me and many others that they are wrong, but why? Why are we convicted thusly, and furthermore often convinced that those who transgress our convictions will be judged according to the standards we vehemently profess?

This has led me to ponder biblical epistemology. I believed my convictions on jihad to be right, but why were they right? I would suggest a few conclusions that not only resolve the question at hand, but also seem to vindicate the Bible’s presentation of a universal judgment of mankind.

Before I proceed I should make clear one very important assumption, namely that there is good and evil, and that such distinctions proceed from God’s throne. So, operating on this assumption that good and evil do exist, I believe that we are all bound to these standards through several means of that inform us of them, and that it is this fact that enable us to evaluate right and wrong and facilitate the just Judgment of man portrayed in the lasts chapters of Revelation.

Firstly, we were given the basic ability of distinguishing right and wrong in the Garden of Eden. In addition, nature seems to undergird our obligations to God’s truth and standards, as does God’s verbal revelation (Psalms 19, Romans 1, et al). Further, it seems that when necessary, we can obtain further, transcendental, God given indications of truth through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 16, 1 Corinthians 2).

So, as much as I would personally like to lie back in the comfortable embrace of pluralism or universalism, it seems none of us are off the hook. As confusing as things can get, it would appear that there are always answers out there, to the heart that truly searches (Jeremiah 29:13).

This conclusion leaves me somewhat discomfited, because it introduces the wrenching ambiguity of who is and who is not truly searching. Perhaps though, such facts are supposed to be inscrutable. Perhaps we are only to dissect our own hearts, and simply pray for our fellow pilgrims.

In any case, I would suggest that God given knowledge and discernment, whether a now innate faculty or a special witness, is not only presented in the Word, but is the only sound epistemological footing on which to ground any sort of discriminating ethical evaluation.

Rest in Peace

So, I know this a rather morbid way to begin a note, but I was walking by a graveyard today (uh, yes, central London, everything's rather crammed together) and had a rather interesting thought come to mind: resting in peace isn't someting that need wait for the slumber of death.

Yesterday, in General Conference, one of the Church's General Authorities stated that a clean conscious is the best friend we can have. I think that's true, and I think when that is the case with us, when we are living with integrity, following what we know to be right, we can live in peace, and rest in peace - daily. When our lives fall in line with God's standards, we are more perfectly able to partake in His shalom, in peace and wholeness, on a daily basis. Resting in peace needn't be something for the afterlife alone. Resting (and living) in peace is a promise we can partake od today, tomorrow, everyday. All we need do is walk step by step, journeying in righteousness, until we finally enter into the Lord's eternal rest (Hebrews 3&4).

September 24

In those quiet, lavender, moonlight hushed moments
When I journey from the dreams of the night to the reality of day
I come to know myself, in a way words cannot say
There, in the stillness before the mind dawns
There is nothing to cajole or distract
Nothing except my soul, the lonely pilgrim who never sleeps
And in that sacred silence, un defiled by the din of wakefulness or the groaning of dreams
I hear my soul cry out, and sing with the silvery notes of angels
It tells me of who I was, who I am -
Though in the brightness of daylight that throws twisted shadows I could hardly tell
It whispers to me of Love beyond knowing, of promises of who I will be
In those moments before reality rips the twilight like a knife
I know God through the silence of my soul
And though it lasts for just a moment, half a moment, gone
Those twilight, purple hours are enough to steer me home.

Fault Lines

Every broken heart has its fault lines. Do you know where yours are?

Cheap Grace

God forgive me my abuse of grace. Forgive me for treating your wounds, your blood with such contempt. Forgive me from turning from repentance to sin, again and again with no thought, not guilt, with an all but insensible heart. Please forgive me and lead me into brighter light.

Love

I think after it all, after all the work, the lies, the selfishness, the deceit; after all the seduction and pretense, the lull into “love;” I think all people really want to is to be loved in their unshelled starkness, to be accepted and embraced by just one other person, and to find completion in the reciprocation of that given love.