The Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ

Having finished the marvelous After You Believe by my good friend N. T. Wright, I moved into my next summer read, The Kingdom of God, a collection of sermons about just that by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I would highly recommend both books (though I have yet to finish the latter).

Today, in The Kingdom of God, I read the following passage. The Biblical passage that Lloyd Jones discusses (Luke 11:14-20) and perhaps more clearly its counterpart in Mark (Mark 3:22-30) show us that Jesus, in ushering in the kingdom, binds Satan in his first coming. Although though Satan still works in this world, God in Christ has ultimate power over him. Consequently, we long for the final coming of the kingdom of God in full power and the abolishment of all evil. At the same time, we work for the kingdom, seeing how through Jesus' life and death Satan has been bound.

"The kingdom of God comes, and came, with the very presence and power manifested by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. There is a wonderful illustration of that in Luke 11:14-20: 'And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. And if I by Beelsebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.'
Now that is what I mean. The kingdom of God came when the Son of God was in this world. The kingdom of God is a manifestation of the power of God; a manifestation of the fact that God is superior to the elements of nature, that He is superior also to the devils and to everything that is evil. The kingdom of God is God's reign and when Christ was here on earth, and when He worked His miracles and manifested His marvelous powers, He said: 'This is the kingdom of God.' Not legislation, not one army conquering another, but the manifestation of the power of God. And did you notice what Christ did? He could calm a storm at sea; He could heal the blind, heal the lame, heal the deaf. He could even raise the dead! He was the Master of creation; He was the Master over all the devils, and He said that that was proof positive that the kingdom of God had come." -Lloyd-Jones, 57

No I won't be no runaway 'cuz I won't run.

So I will never enter Professor Harper's basement lab to work on lipid biophysics again. On the plus side, three students are replacing me. Though the most logical explanation for such a phenomenon would be that Professor Harper has greater funding than most years, I chalk it up to the need to replace me with three people. That's how good I was...yeah right. But walking out of the lab on Thursday, I realized that I will miss biophysics work.

Now is where I, in rare form, get sentimental about the parts of college I will miss. I guess I can allow myself this as I pick up maintenance work at Wheaton College tomorrow and start a new mini-chapter in my life before going to Seminary at SBTS in the fall!!

For one, I will miss being a Sunday School small group leader with Sam Haist for three years in Discovery Village at Ada Bible Church!! We have taught many of the same boys for two or three years and yesterday was bittersweet as I said goodbye to several of them. What a blessing and privilege it was to serve God and to serve those families for three years!

I will also miss volunteering at ICCF. For those yearning for enlightenment, ICCF stands for Inner City Christian Federation and is an organization in Grand Rapids helping with mortgage foreclosure prevention and placing families in homes or shelters. I have volunteered this past year, working heavily with the foreclosure prevention counselors. They have been so much fun to work for and I will greatly miss them.

I will miss several wonderful opportunities I have had to engage with my major (physics) at Calvin within the context of helping other students. This includes tutoring, grading, and lab-assisting.

Finally, I am going to miss my friends. Especially my housemates this past year (Micah, Grant, JJ, and Samikins). But also all you others who made Calvin such a wonderful and enjoyable time. I hope to see many of you again! And, of course, I will miss 80's night with the Ridge and other friends. But I know I will go to an 80's night again...sometime when I visit G-Rap.

As this summer dawns on y'all, do yourselves a favor and get one of these epic albums that have recently been released:
Together by the New Pornographers (indie-rock at its finest)
This is Happening by LCD Soundsystem (electronic/dance)
So Runs the World Away by Josh Ritter (rock and roll with a lot of words)
High Violet by The National (abnormal, but beautiful vocals overlaying great rock and roll)

Nice Chatting, Eat the Pizza!

Working at John's Christian Stores in high school, I worked a fair number of various in-store events and concerts. Perhaps the highlight of these experiences was when Joy Williams came and I got to be her bodyguard for a little while (It's really not that glamorous; I just stood by her table while she signed autographs). But the crowning moment of the night was when I was on break in the back eating the dinner I had packed for myself, while there was pizza for the band on the table. Joy came back and we struck up a brief conversation, which ended with her asking why I wasn't eating the pizza. After saying it was for her and her crew, she said I was more than welcome to eat the pizza. At the end of the evening, I got her to sign a poster for me on which she wrote "Nice chatting, eat the pizza!"

Well, like most CCM artists, Joy Williams was nothing special musically. So I quickly forgot her. Since my high school days, Joy has left CCM and moved to Nashville, working on various music projects there. Tonight I stumbled upon her latest, a duo she's formed with John Paul White called the Civil Wars. You can check out their uber-hip myspace here. And their music is some of the most beautiful, refreshing music I have heard in a while. Their voices flow together marvelously, creating gems such as Tip of my Tongue. I implore you to do yourself (at least) two favors. One, watch the video for Poison & Wine. Two, download their FREE live album from their myspace. If this whets your musical palette, please support them and download their EP.

They have been compared to The Swell Season, the couple from the movie Once, whose newest album Strict Joy is incredible.

Choppy Seas

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." Revelation 21:1

So I have been thinking quite a bit on this verse, when pondering the continuity between the earth now and how it will be transformed in being made new. In Romans 1:21-22, we see that at Christ's second coming, all of creation will be set free from its bondage! Not destroyed, but set free from its bondage. Likewise, we see in Revelation 21:1 that the first earth will be transformed into the new earth. Evil and pain will be abolished from the earth we live on as it is transformed; made new.

So what about this statement regarding the sea? Thinking back on the stories of Jonah, God parting the sea for the Israelites, and creation, where God's new order emerged from the dark primal sea, we begin to understand what the sea represented for the Jewish people. "The sea came to symbolize...the dark power of evil, threatening to destroy God's good creation, God's people, God's purposes. In books like Daniel, the sea is where the monsters come from" (N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 52). Consequently, just as we see Jesus' power of the agents of chaos in His calming of the storm (Mark 4:35-41), we see that God's visible defeat of chaos and evil will occur at the second coming of Christ. Balancing the idea of the "already and the not yet" we see that Christ has already defeated the forces of evil at the cross, but the final, visible nature of this defeat will be inaugurated in his second coming.

But the main reason I wrote what I have is as an introduction to the next passage. Psalm 107 is a community thanksgiving that accompanies the offering of sacrifices for the Israelites. The thanksgiving has many parts, but in verses 23-30, we find the people extolling the Lord from rescuing them from the dangers of the sea. These verses triumphantly proclaim the power of God over the raging sea, but with Scriptures such as those already outlined, they also attest to God's power over the forces of evil; the forces of chaos.

"Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the LORD,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven;
they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits' end.
They they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
They they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven."
-Psalm 107:23-30 (ESV)

Christian Character & A Kingdom View

I've been reading Tom Wright's latest, After You Believe and it's fantastic. He unpacks why virtue (properly defined) matters and why, after you believe, Christian character is of utmost importance. Here he talks about ways to view the New Testament:

"Christians, particularly in the Western world, have for a long time been divided between 'epistles people' and 'gospels people.' The 'epistles people' have thought of Christianity primarily in terms of Jesus's death and resurrection 'saving us from our sins.' The 'gospels people' have thought primarily in terms of following Jesus in feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and so on. The 'epistles people' have often found it difficult to give a clear account of what was going on in Jesus's kingdom-announcement and his call to his followers to be 'perfect.' The 'gospel people'--or perhaps we should say the 'beginning-of-the-gospels people' since the line of thought they embrace usually screens out the last few chapters--have often found it difficult to explain why the Jesus who was doing these remarkable things had to die, and die so soon...The either/or split does no justice, in fact, to either the epistles or the gospels. Still less does it do justice to Jesus himself. For him, the kingdom which he inaugurated could be firmly established only through his death and resurrection. Or, to put it the other way around, the main purpose of his death and resurrection was to establish the kingdom he had already begun to inaugurate." (pg. 110-111)

N. T. Wright unpacks this a little...and then (and this is gold):

"Once again, part of the problem is that for many centuries Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus's death was "to save us from our sins," understood in a variety of more or less helpful ways. But for the gospels themselves, that rescue of individuals (which of course remains a central element) is designed to serve a larger purpose: God's purpose, the purpose of God's kingdom. And in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place (as Jesus already called the disciples to take theirs) not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it. In other words: rulers and priests." (pg. 112).

Let's be smarter Christians

So I have not actually read any Dallas Willard to date, but I believe it was him in some form or another who implored modern-day evangelicals to be smart. In addition to being a very good person, Jesus was very smart. As such, I implore us Christians to be smarter about our faith.

I recently read this article off NPR, following a link on Al Mohler's twitter: http://ow.ly/1rvS1
Of course there are many things to rile up Christians in this article. If it isn't obvious by now, Brian McLaren is a heretic, the 'New kind of Christianity' he promotes isn't Christianity at all, and I (at least) feel extremely uncomfortable calling him an evangelical. But here's the quote in this article that really got me thinking:

"We also know that — particularly within the evangelical community — the younger you are, the less likely you are to take the Bible literally, to believe that the Bible is the inerrant 'word of God,' as compared to a book of moral precepts."

This quote gets under my skin for two main reasons: it uses the word 'inerrancy' without defining it and makes the statement that you either have to take the Bible literally or not literally at all. The only 'history' this quote takes into account is that of the world either being 6,000 years old or the earth being much older.

In beginning to address both issues, I would argue that the Bible was never meant to be a science textbook. The Bible addresses the What and the Why of Creation, for example, but its overarching goal is not to describe the 'scientific how'. That being said, if Christians must subscribe to a definition of inerrancy that holds the Bible to be a science textbook, count me out. I think we should instead hold to the Bible as inerrant in that its divine inspiration prevents errors (*this is a much longer discussion in and of itself, of course). At the same time, the Bible is most assuredly MORE than a book of 'moral precepts.' It is the divinely inspired Word of God, showing us God working in fallen humanity to bring about redemption through Jesus Christ.

Similarly, in addressing the question of the literal nature of the Bible, we must ask, is the younger generation the first that opposes this scientific, cut and dry literacy of the Bible? Or, at least, are we the first generation that wishes to use the word 'allegorical' alongside 'literal'? The answer, my friends, to my great delight, is no. In fact, it is only post-enlightenment that Christians have come to view the Bible in this cut and dry literal manner. Most pre-enlightenment Christian thinkers held to allegorical interpretations of Scriptures alongside its literal nature. For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, came up with all sorts of allegorical interpretations of Job (some of them admittedly a bit far-fetched), but, yes, held that the story of Job literally occurred. In this way, we see that we have a great heritage of Christian thinkers that, yes, literally believed that God created the world, but, no, did not do it in six literal days. It's allowing for both an allegorical interpretation and multiple levels of fulfillment of prophecy, for example, that allowed reformed thinkers to postulate amillennialism, a view of the end times that is extremely Biblical, but allows for great compassion, anticipation, and action in the hear-and-now.

I could go on for a while, but will simply say: let's not limit our understanding of Christianity to what happens now, what happened in Bible times, and when God created the world. Let's look at how earlier Christian thinkers and theologians approached Christianity and the Bible. And, yes, they did disagree over many theological things. And...science and Christianity are not two opposites. My friends, to deny microevolution, for example, is like chopping off your leg and insisting you can walk. Just as many great Christian thinkers, such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, allowed their scientific discoveries to complement the Bible, let us strive to do the same.

MRI's Always Make Me Fall Asleep

So all week I've been gearing up to write about how good the Watson Twins' new album is. And, it truly is quite good. However, I'm one of those people who likes to listen to an album many times. Agreeing with Amanda Palmer's philosophy of music, to really get to know an artist and his or her music, his or her music needs to be listened to many times. So, after listening to Talking to You, Talking to Me a religious amount, I went back to an album I'd purchased a few weeks back, IRM by Charlotte Gainsbourg. For all you musical indie nerds who like to name drop musical artists like your life depended on it, Beck wrote, played, and produced most of the music on IRM along with Charlotte. Check out their handiwork on Heaven Can Wait. Or this sweet performance of Trick Pony on Letterman (note the dude in the werewolf mask).

Now bear with me as I relate what I was thinking about today to Charlotte. First, I was thinking about the fact that graduate school emphasizes gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge or (to be a bit more generous) for the sake of mankind. As a Christian, this irritates me excessively, as all is to be done to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). This led me to question how I partake in entertainment, including listening to music. I should, at least at some level, engage it from a Christian worldview. Second, I was arguing with friends about the limitations of science. It seems that science can (and does) provide a lot of God-glorifying mechanical explanations of the world. However, there is always a limitation science cannot go beyond because of its mechanistic constraints. For example, I can explain how neurons in the brain fire and synapses work, but how can I, by science, explain WHY something makes me excited? Or WHY and WHEN I have impulsive decisions? This conversation is not by any means a closed book, so please chime in.

Then I came across this song by Charlotte Gainsbourg. I read this wonderful review and learned about the near-death experience that brought Charlotte to write (the song, which can be hear here) IRM (which is the French abbreviation for MRI). First, I could more fully appreciate the song as I understood the musical effects created to give the feeling of experiencing an MRI. Second, the lyrics simply swept me away, especially the last four lines. Science, in the form of an MRI and EKG (more info on what that is here) can only map so much of the brain. But what about the trauma that lies in the shadow of our sin? Without further ado, the lyrics to IRM:

Take a picture, what's inside?
Ghost image in my mind
Neural pattern like a spider
Capillary to the centre

Hold still and press the button
Looking through a glass onion
Following the X-ray eye
From the cortex to medulla

Analyze EKG
Can you see a memory?
Register all my fear
On a flowchart disappear

Leave my head demagnetized
Tell me where the trauma lies
In the scan of pathogen
Or the shadow of my sin

*Image taken from here
**Lyrics can be found on Charlotte's website