Christiancheese

What does it mean when, before a meal, we pray, “Bless this food to our bodies”? Are we asking God to miraculously protect us from any harmful germs or bacteria that might have infected the food? Or are we asking Him to nullify the effects of the junk food on the table (do we somehow hope He’ll turn that Big Mac into a bushel of leafy spinach as it travels down our esophagus?). Or are we simply asking Him to cause the food to nourish us? If the latter is the case—if we feel that speaking those words to God is necessary to ensure nourishment—then I want to ask, do we really need a prayer to make food become nutritious? Isn’t that the way God made food in the first place? And I don’t think anyone should expect special treatment by virtue of their being a Christian—in other words, if you excel in fast food consumption, you should not anticipate the health benefits of a good diet. I’m afraid that many of our packaged pre-food prayers have lost their meaning, if they ever had any to begin with! It’s enough to thank Him for abundantly providing for our needs.

Expression's Great Destroyer

As a writer, I realize that Insight is the soul of writing. I must have it if I am going to communicate something worthy of reading. It helps me do my job of organizing Life into words for those who cannot verbalize Life as easily. It helps me stimulate the reader to think new thoughts, or to think old ones more deeply. It allows me to share unique reflections of reality. It also presents a great opportunity for Pride to take root.

My prayer to God is that He keeps me from ever seeking my own glory in the area of Insight. I've lived long enough to suspect that I see and think things that are unique to me, and many of these things I cannot describe in words. To me, they're wonderful hints at Heaven and tastes of unimaginable pieces of infinity. Perhaps they're God's way of uniquely and personally ministering to my soul. Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven, has really helped me better understand these thoughts and feelings and inklings, which I've had all my life.

In order for my prayer to be effective, I must not forget that any ability or insight I have is God's undeserved gift to me. If I'm honest with myself, and if I search deeply enough, I can find evidence of the subtle pride that makes me take pleasure in thinking that I'm "in-tune" or smarter than others. I ask God to forgive me of that pride, and to remind me that there are many smarter, more in-tune people out there. In fact, each person on this planet has abilities, thoughts, and insights that I do not—many of them probably just don't feel the need to write about it! I am nothing special, and yet I've noticed that a big temptation writers and intellectual types face is the temptation to think they are profound. It's good to remember that God educates and exalts the humble, and brings low the proud. I believe the Lord set up a great irony in that at the very moment anyone takes pride in their gift, that gift diminishes.

What I pray is that I can use my gifts and insights to humbly yet passionately express what God has allowed me to see, for His glory and for our enjoyment. We are all gifted in different ways and deficient in others. That's why we need each other. I never want to think of myself as being needed more than anyone else. My desire is to gladly and humbly enjoy the privilege of doing my part in reflecting God's glory, and to enjoy other people's parts even more than my own.

The Link

The following thought was inspired by these words from Randy Alcorn's book on Heaven: "What possible effect could our redemption have on galaxies that are billions of light years away? The same effect that our fall had on them."

Here is a dialogue that I feel could very well have occurred within the divine Trinity before the creation of space and time:

"While they yet live on earth, let them feel the unfathomable gap between them and the galaxies. Let their observations cause them in their souls to define space as a lonely infinity, with unreachable nebulae and impossible distances. Let that be the Universe's reality in their minds—that of an untouchable, disconnected expanse. When they have become convinced of that reality, let Us surprise them and give them not only the world, but the whole Universe."

God is our link to everything, since He intimately knows us while simultaneously intimately knowing, for example, the farthest star, and each of its atoms—where they are, what they're doing, their weight, their speed.

The Creator bridges the gap between any two things, since He is everywhere. Each of us is only one Person removed from the farthest point in the universe. I can literally say, “I know Someone who's been there.” And, as resurrected humans in a resurrected universe, I think it's likely we'll journey there too one day. How then can outer space be lonely if we have an omnipresent God? It isn't lonely, but perhaps God allowed us to adopt that impression so that our heavenly surprise would be that much greater.

God is quite the Bridger of chasms, come to think of it. Light years pose no challenge to Him, great though they be. But even greater than the distances in our universe is the distance between sinful beings and a holy God. Time and space are nothing to Him; but that He would condescend to Earth as Christ, and suffer torture and humiliation is something. More unfathomable than the wonders of our universe is the wonder of His sacrifice. Without that, we, along with the universe, would have no redemption, but would languish in the outermost of nothingness, eternally devoid of God. For those who have trusted in His sacrifice, though, verse 12 of Psalm 103 records the most glorious distance of all: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

A Thought to Rekindle the Awe

I am eternal not only because I will live forever, but also because I existed in eternity past. I existed, as did all humans (as did all created things) in the mind and plan of God. He knew me and chose me before the foundation of the world. We, Creation, are a part of God, and have always been. We were never foreign to Him. He never suddenly thought us up the way we might suddenly think of something that before had not existed in our imaginations. In that sense, we have always been a part of the Infinite.

Electronic Childhood and the Beginning of the House Kids

It’s strange now, to think of the Eighties
When the era of outside childhood was close to death

but had not yet died
Three years on Oak Street and two in the steep Raymond Hills
The outdoors, though in the dusky suburbs,

still owned our utmost enchantment
We formed our gangs, walking the sidewalks with plastic rifles
and making teepees from palm fronds after windstorms
A swimming pool never had such appeal as then,

and so long would we swim
that night lights became fuzzy

and our eyes burned in bed at night,
leaking chlorine as the crickets chirped.
Sitting on skateboards we’d careen down hills

and crash in the grass, and do it again.
Outside with lemonade and pizza

we braved the bathwater currents
of summer’s Santa Ana’s.
It seems there were more neighbor kids then,

all members of secret clubs
Yet this childhood was incomplete
Old pals abandoned their trees,

now tantalized by Nintendo
It was hard to beat Double Dragon

or Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
This challenge now chosen over making a tree house
Or breaking into the apartment basement
I was only seven or eight when I heard

the last whisper of that age of creative play
How lucky we were

to splash in the last of its ancient shallows
How long it must have survived—up until these Eighties
From Creation, for centuries
From little Charlemagne with his sword in the forest,

to a pack of boys exploring the
recesses of a Builder’s Emporium
The death didn’t happen at once, though,

but started undercover, mid-century
and like a seed it worked slowly,

laying the plans for later decades
I know, from my folks’ stories of model cars

and of day treks on the railroad tracks
These things they did,

yet in their homes there too lurked a television
It was a slow death for this era,
caused by the very same electricity

we could not now do without
But perhaps the era is not dead
For there are still some with the outdoor itch
I see them on skateboards or playing sports
Refusing their veins viscosity
Loosening electricity’s grasp
They truly live

Fame and Familiarity

The sun really is a star—it’s a celebrity. And today I drove through an especially glitzy display. Its reflection ricocheted off every windshield, bumper, license plate and pair of sunglasses directly into my own sunglasses. I realized that all the TV billboards, bus-side ads, and magazines combined still couldn’t offer their patrons as much fame as our cityscape offers the sun. The sun is famous. I often don’t see it that way. I usually just think of it as this blaring thing, if I think of it at all.

Inklings of Immortality

I'll never forget these words from my college writing professor, Jack Simons: "I have more to say than I have life left to say it in." I feel the same way—and I don't think I'm alone in this. I have more to express than I have life left to express it in. This includes thoughts, feelings, ideas, songs, new forms of art, my reactions to beauty and earth's metaphors, thoughts on God and reality and the ramifications of infinity, and so on. I yearn to share and discuss these facets of God's infinitely-faceted beauty with others and develop them through interaction and communal enjoyment. But I cannot—at least not to the degree that would do them justice. For example, I've heard music in my head that I cannot express because my fingers aren't trained and my memory can't retain it long enough for me to go out and learn how to recreate it, and even if I could recreate it, I don't know which instruments would make some of the sounds or even if such instruments exist yet. Add to that my unimpressive singing voice and you can see how the frustration could mount.

Lost inspirations and ideas, songs and inventions, feelings I couldn't describe and that left as quickly as they came—all of this used to make me sad because I assumed they would probably never come again, and it felt lonely because I felt I would never be able to share them with anyone.

We supposedly use only 10% of our potential brainpower; I feel that I express only 0.001% of what is in me, and if I work really hard, then maybe at the end of my life I will have bumped that number up to 0.01%. Imagine all the potential for regret there—"I could have been . . ." "I could have done . . ." "I could have created . . ." After all, it is all there in my mind and my soul.

I have to admit that if I were more of a doer than a dreamer, I'd certainly have more works to show for it. But even if that were the case, I'd still be limited in such a way that I would never be able to fully unleash my God-given potential this side of Heaven. The great limiter here is Sin and the curse that accompanied it—the curse that made humankind just a shadow of what it was meant to be. This causes manifold symptoms in our being to the degree that we truly are sick. With me, these symptoms are ideas and feelings lost in a flash because they were too big and beautiful for my fallen mind to handle or even begin to figure out or make sense of. I just do not have the means, the time, or the sustaining mental and physical faculty to carry them to fruition. And even if I were privileged with all of those, the hardships of this life would certainly hinder it (yet ironically I do realize that such hardships are often the catalysts by which wonderful works of art come into being in the first place).

There are of course those times that I do flesh out a vision, either in poetry, prose, or song. But it never quite matches the original, core "thing" that struck me in the first place. Its expression is imperfect.

Now, by God's grace, I have come to see such occurrences as the Muse opening my soul for a foretaste of the things I'll do for eternity, things that will come to pass—and things that I will do well. It's hopeful now, and I must give much of the credit for this outlook to Randy Alcorn. He has written a wonderful, biblically sound book that I can't recommend enough. It's simply titled, "Heaven." The issues I'm dealing with here (and have dealt with all my life) are addressed in Chapter 41, entitled, "Will Heaven Ever be Boring?" In that chapter Alcorn quotes some notable authors and pastors. The first is Victor Hugo, who wrote:

I feel within me that future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brighter. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens the nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse: history, drama, philosophy, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say, as others have said, "My day's work is done." But I cannot say, "My life is done." My work will recommence the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn.

The hopeful news continues further on in the book. Alcorn writes:

In The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven, Wilbur Smith suggests, 'In heaven we will be permitted to finish many of those worthy tasks which we had dreamed to do while on earth but which neither time nor strength nor ability allowed us to achieve.'

This is an encouraging thought. It saves us from frantically thinking that we have to do it all now, or from giving up in despair because of the limits of time, money, and strength, and the duties that keep us from certain things we'd love to do.

James Campbell took comfort in this same idea:

'This throws some measure of relieving light upon the painful mystery of a life brought to a sudden close in the fullness of its power. In the presence of such a tragedy we instinctively ask, Why this waste? Is all the training, discipline, and culture of this choice spirit to be lost? It cannot be; for in God's universe nothing is ever lost. No preparation is ever in vain. There is need up there for clear heads, warm hearts, and skilled hands. . . . If some kinds of work are over, others will begin; if some duties are laid down, others will be taken up. And any regret for labour missed down here, will be swallowed up in the joyful anticipation of the higher service that awaits every prepared and willing worker in the upper kingdom of the Father. . . . He will allow no heaven-born hope to be put to shame, but will bring to realization life's brightest visions.'

Later in the chapter Alcorn quotes Bruce Milne:

The one who is Lord of the whole of life was never going to bring us at the end into an eternal existence of mental constriction, or of emotional and creative impoverishment. Creativity will surely be valued, for such an anticipation must be in keeping with the nature of him who set the morning stars a-singing when he created them at the beginning, and whose joyful, uninhibited cry echoes across the battlements of the new creation. 'See, I am making everything new!' . . . What creative possibilities await us in the unfolding of the eternal ages no present imagination can begin to unravel.

Lastly, Alcorn quotes from pastor Mark Buchanan's book, Things Unseen:

Why won't we be bored in heaven? Because it's the one place where both impulses—to go beyond, to go home—are perfectly joined and totally satisfied. It's the one place where we're constantly discovering—where everything is always fresh and the possessing of a thing is as good as the pursuing of it—and yet where we are fully at home—where everything is as it ought to be and where we find, undiminished, that mysterious something we never found down here . . . And this lifelong melancholy that hangs on us, this wishing we were someone else somewhere else, vanishes too. Our craving to go beyond is always and fully realized. Our yearning for home is once and for all fulfilled. The ahh! of deep satisfaction and the aha! of delighted surprise meet, and they kiss.

Now everything makes sense. I have more to do and express than I have life left to do it in. But let me adjust that sentence: I have more to do and express than I have life left in this present body of death to do it in. I am immortal! Unquestionably, I have more in me than 70 or 80 years could ever allow. Even if those years were graciously unhindered by physical and mental limitations and the general hardships of life that often force us to take stifling paths, and even if one had every creative tool and opportunity at his disposal every day of his life—even if all of those things were the case, a normal human lifetime would still not allow enough years to express God's image in oneself. I don't think even a million years would be enough. Like all humans, I am made for eternity. Therefore, by nature of what God has made me (an immortal), I must be filled with desires, passions, and skills that are able to be developed to the degree that eternity won't outlast them. Not to mention those aforementioned unexplainable inklings of future desires, passions and skills as yet unimagined because we have not yet seen the new colors, the new sounds, the new ???s, the new objects and concepts and realities to which these new and ever-increasing desires will be attached.

Mortality, not immortality, is unnatural. Death is unnatural. Sin brought death into this world. We were made for something far greater than this fallen universe allows. We are so much more than short-lived earth folk, because our Creator made us in His image, and He is infinite and unfathomably good, deserving eternal expression. We are vessels for that expression, each one uniquely tailored by God to reflect His glory and enjoy Him forever. And I am here only explaining the manifestation of this reality in my own soul—little me, one of billions.

Those who tell themselves that this life is all there is consequently come to life-limiting conclusions and world views, adopting humanistic philosophies all of which, upon slightly closer examination, turn out to be so sadly empty. Here's a common one (often the moral of a movie): "It's enough to know I lived a good life and made the world a better place. I can die now." It's certainly commendable to make the world a better place, but is that all that this life is about? You die and cease to exist, but at least you made the world a better place (too bad you won't be around to enjoy the improvements). Even the good feelings you would have about yourself and your magnanimity would vanish the moment you died. You would have nothing—you would be nothing except a memory to those still living, and you'd be lucky if that memory lasted more than two generations. Frankly, if this life is all there is, your end is dirt.

Even though these humanistic philosophies are more hopeful than, say, nihilism, they are all ultimately still hopeless. It always depressed me when I felt that group pressure—the kind that insists that you settle for their "good news." I remember being indoctrinated with it in public school, and I still see it in the banal messages of many films and other media. In light of God's reality, their good news is not only bad but awful, and their philosophies are oppressive, and always vain. They glorify man instead of God, but ironically they also devalue and dehumanize man because they don't allow him to be the eternal, God-imaged being that he is. Look at communism and Nazism, and what their atheistic conclusions led to.

Here's the liberating truth: All good things will receive expression. It fits with God's character. That Christ died to save sinners is certainly The Good News. However, that Good News encompasses much more than we often realize: when Jesus died, He not only redeemed sinners, He also redeemed the currently-cursed universe. It will know this redemption only at the end of the Age, when He refashions the universe and creates a new heavens and new earth. John Wesley sums it up: "The best is yet to be." For more on this, read the Bible. Oh, and need I plug Alcorn's book again?

To Ask Mr. Alcorn

Will Heaven have room for silliness? Banter? Pulling someone's leg? What about practical jokes, or bagging on each other? Will good-natured heckling ever echo from Heaven's sports arenas? Will any of these sorts of things exist? What about Electronica and Ambient music and the strange feelings sometimes associated with them? Where else can we take this line of questioning, and how might the answers to these questions affect our lives as we now live them—how might they affect our choices in music and humor and amusement?

Nerd Thought

Thinking of outer space makes me realize that we define so much of life using ourselves and earth as a reference point. Doing so is certainly practical, and even necessary, but it's not so much true as it is convenient. Really, there is no true below or above. Only that which a planet’s gravity defines. Leave that planet, escape its gravity, and suddenly “underneath” doesn’t exist. Indeed, the vast majority of the universe does not recognize such terms. In outer space, position is relative.

Confidence

Are you insecure? Only in total dependence is there total freedom from insecurity. That total dependence must rest on something that cannot be taken away or destroyed. Obviously, that something is God. If the reason I'm confident in front of others is because I have a fit body and a good hair day, then my confidence teeters on a thin thread. If the reason I don't fear man is because I've never lost an argument, then the confidence that rests on my own quick intellect has no guarantee, as I could have a stroke or develop Alzheimer's disease. The great paradox is that before I can feel secure, I must admit that I have nothing to offer toward my security. God is my anchor. He is my Rock.

Creative Blasphemy

On my way to Camarillo last December I saw a pickup truck in front of me with three Jesus fish in a row facing down with the bottom ends of the tails cut off. The resulting design was a clear 666. Then, in the corner of my eye I recognized the ubiquitous Calvin decal on his rear window. But, as was the case with the Jesus fish, this decal had been specially altered. It now depicted a somewhat bewildered but still trustful Calvin at the foot of a cross, and the cross was peeing on him.

What a commentary on Christendom, or perhaps religion in general. His car had no other decals or bumper stickers. It seemed solely dedicated to making its one point. This was the only message he wanted to send. I wonder what bad experience, if any, he might have had in the name of Christendom.