A brief recap:

We’re in the midst of a new epoch in our human history, an epoch largely defined through the development of new technologies. While many of these technologies have advanced our ability to communicate across vast distances instantly and to devise new methods to improve our health and standards of living, they’ve also allowed scientists to dive far more deeply into the fundamental building blocks of our physical, chemical and biological worlds. And, along with these developments, we’re beginning to see early shifts in the most elemental and perhaps most important of all debates: “Is there actually a God.”

When up until recently, that discussion was relegated in large part to theologians and the practitioners of various religions, the possibility of its truth has not been seriously embraced by the broader scientific community for hundreds of years.

Then came the Big Bang and, all of a sudden, it appeared that there was actually a physical origin of the universe, before which there was no time or space or matter or energy. Yet somehow something came out of nothing. How did that happen?

Well, we can say everyone came to a kind of standstill, sort of like a heavyweight champion boxing fight. Each in their own corner, posturing, with no apparent bell to bring them together. The theists had their answer (God) and many scientists had theirs answer (Anything but God).

Now, let’s be a little more specific.

What has been proven conclusively (about which there is no apparent disagreement): All that we know that exists had a beginning. Before that, there was nothing. No thing. No matter (stuff). No energy. And, no time. No nature.

Then, in less than one trillionth of a second (in our time), there appeared everything that is now contained in our universe. All the stuff that we call galaxies (of which there are at least hundreds of billions) and all that is in them and between them. One trillionth of a second (let that roll around in your head) and “poof” the stuff that makes up approximately one billion trillion stars alone. That’s a billion times a trillion. Plus other stuff. From nothing to the actual physical amount of matter and energy that it took and continues to take to make that much stuff. Poof.

Just look out your window. See the trees and houses, roads and cars, people strolling. Then cast your mind’s eye further and see the mountains and forests and rivers and beaches and oceans that seemingly stretch forever. Whole continents come into focus and, then, as we look downwards, we can see all of the minerals in the earth until we reach our molten core. Just a short 93 million miles away is the natural source of the energy to sustain us, our own star, massive from our perspective but really not a blip on the cosmic radar. Somewhere around seven billion of us, with all other creatures, inhabit our planet that just happened to be structured exactly how we need it in order to sustain life.

That’s worth repeating. We live in a place and at a time that is exactly how it needs to be in order for us to be here alive.

Ok. That may seem to be a simple statement. As in, “of course. It has to be that way or else we wouldn’t be here. Why is that surprising?”

The prevailing viewpoint on this for most of the last century and going backwards into the 1800s was that we were basically lucky. For instance, we had a sun that was at the right distance away and could give us energy without burning us up. We had the right amount of gravity that kept us planted on the ground but not so much as to squish us flat. We have the right atmosphere that supports life: Right amount of oxygen, while also providing the right amount of CO2 to support vegetation. We have the right minerals, the most important of which is carbon that is required for life. We have water, which only exists in a very narrow range of temperatures in liquid form, without which life would be impossible. Carbon and water are the fundamental building blocks of life.

The advances in biology, especially evolutionary biology from about 1850 onward, suggested that natural processes led to the development of complex life forms, including the appearance of countless species. While Darwin and other evolutionary biologists freely admitted that they didn’t know how life emerged from non-life on our planet perhaps billions of years ago, they largely coalesced around a common hypothesis that ran something like this:

A pre-biotic (meaning non-life) “soup” of chemicals in young earth (our earth has been around for the most part for about four billion years) spontaneously reformed as biotic chemicals (hence the term “biochemistry”). A ton of research, thinking and experimental efforts have gone into considering what those chemicals needed to be and what mechanism would need to occur for them to reform from non-living to living.

In essence, they were trying to figure out how the first living cell was born.

While running the risk of being overly simplistic, the science texts always ran something like this:

Through some infusion of energy (lightning strike, heat, etc…), the non living chemicals transformed themselves into a simple living cell. This is the “primordial goo” that spontaneously became alive, then able to reproduce itself. Following that, nature took over through natural selection and random mutations that, with time, led to the complex life forms that now populate our planet and allow us to exercise such things as the ability to reason.

The fundamental precept (a presupposition) was that none of this was guided by any kind of intelligent and creative external force.

(Brief aside: Another theory, not taken particularly seriously by most scientists but offered up as a possible explanation, is that an alien life form “implanted” life on this planet, either by intention or accident. This is still bandied around today. However it doesn’t answer the question of how that life form originated in a universe of just matter and energy.)

It’s right here that the divide is at its most pronounced. Just as the question of how our universe spontaneously appeared from nothing, the question of how the first live cell came forth from non-living chemicals is fundamental to how we should address whether we are the product (result) of intelligent design or unguided and unintelligent “natural” processes.

If all of this is sounding too complicated or esoteric, consider that the answer to those two questions will impact everything we do, behave, and think about in the course of our lives. Yes, ultimately, the answers to those two questions is at the basis of everything.

Right here is where the rubber hits the road.

Should you still be interested, let’s start with Physics. Please don’t be scared off.

But, first, I need to bring back to these pages my friend, Gary, who is rather an interesting man.

By training he was (he’s now retired) a high energy physicist. What that really means is that he was a Ph.D. working with huge machines that basically recreated the conditions of the sun in a laboratory. Now, when I mean “huge machine,” I mean just that. The machine and the support system that allowed it to function occupied large buildings that would just as easily have housed jet aircraft, I suppose. In any event, what they were trying to do is something called “fusion” science (the atomic reaction in our sun as opposed to our normal “fission” nuclear reactors.) In essence, they were looking at particles smaller than any of us can imagine to see how they function and why that’s important.

While he was not alone as a Christian in his field, he was in a small minority. Through his observations as well as other experiences, Gary recognized design as behind reality.

In the late 1920s, the astronomer Edwin Hubble (yes, that Hubble after which our first large space telescope was named) announced that he’d confirmed that the universe was actually expanding and doing so in every direction at the same rate. In other words, every celestial object was moving away from every other celestial object. Viewed on a grand scale, this meant that all of the hundreds of billions of galaxies are each regularly moving apart from one another as if a balloon had them imprinted all of them on its surface and was being systematically inflated. You get the picture.

He proved this by observing what has been called the red shift. Look it up if you’d like. It’s never been disproven and, in fact, led the way forward both in exposing the mistaken view that we are in a steady state and in leading us backward in time to an actual beginning. This scientific viewpoint has received no real counterargument. Einstein gladly admitted its truth and stated that it neatly aligned with his theory of General Relativity (too complicated to unpack here).

Well, it was quickly understood that, if the universe is consistently expanding (and our increasingly advanced telescopes were able to confirm this), then we can put our lenses on reverse and look backwards. Kind of like rewinding the clock, observing as the numbers proceed accordingly. Larger and larger telescopes, enhanced through all sorts of new and exciting technologies, were eventually able to look backwards in time to the earliest moments in our universe, about 14 billion years ago.

While you may know what comes next, we have to realize what a big deal this was.

As much as I’ve studied this (and I’ve studied it a whole lot), my mind staggers at what has been discovered.

You see, without any alternative viewpoint, virtually all scientists now understand that all matter and energy in the universe can be traced back to single moment before which there was neither matter, energy, time or space. I wrote about this recently.

And, then, something happened and existence came into existence. We call that event, somewhat inexactly, The Big Bang. (Of course, there was no “bang” because there was no sound but what actually happened, I guess, closely resembles an explosion of epic proportions!)

This immediately created all sorts of confusion in the broader scientific community. Without going into detail (I’ve found it fascinating as I’ve studied the evolution of the philosophy of science), the dominant view shifted to the point that there was really no longer a question of when the universe originated but of how and why.

In essence, something came out of nothing. Again, something (really all of the stuff in the universe and there is a whole lot of stuff, won’t you agree?) came out of nothing. Zero. At least that was what was being proposed.

Of course, alternative explanations have cropped up, including that the universe is constantly expanding until gravity takes over and it contracts down to “almost” nothing before it “blows up again.” (This is no longer taken seriously.) And, then, we later get the multiverse and string theories, each of which is the search by scientists to find some possible explanation other than there was a creative Intelligence behind the beginning.

In essence, their work starts with the grand assumption that there is no Creator or God, so there must be another explanation. Unfortunately, for them, they have found no evidence to support such conjecture. They’re hunting, while simultaneously trying to circumvent evidence to support a creative intelligence behind it all. Because to do so will not only open a door in the wall but, perhaps, a fatal crack in the entire edifice.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

At this point, one can see some overlap between the theory and understanding of the Big Bang and two of the most well-known verses in scripture, the first at the beginning of the Old Testament and the second at the beginning of the Gospel of John in the New Testament.

But, for our purposes, we’ve only just begun and, perhaps the most amazing thing has yet to be mentioned.

What have new technological tools allowed us to see that have substantially shifted the debate and why is this debate not being held publicly in the mainstream?

What recent discoveries are threatening to topple the dominant views of physicists, chemists and biologists for the major part of the last two hundred years?

And, we can’t forget that science has tremendously influenced philosophy, which, itself, is a building block for worldviews that govern thought and behavior.

Some big questions.

I’ll say it again because it really deserves repeating.

We are talking about the things that scientists are discovering that are leading to the unraveling of basic tenets that have governed the assumptions of the general scientific community for generations.

This is not theology. This is not the Bible Belt proclaiming their traditional beliefs. This is not seminaries or missionaries or pastors at the Sunday pulpit. This is high level science being conducted objectively using the very methods used by scientists such as Darwin and Einstein.

Some disclaimers with explanation:

I’m not a scientist although I’ve long been fascinated by what it has to tell us about the physical world. And, I’m quite familiar with a thing we can call “scientific method,” having studied it both formally and informally.

I’m about as far away from a mechanical engineer as you can get but I love reading about and listening to how things function, especially really big things like stars and galaxies and very little things like particles and waves.

I’m not a mathematician but I love numbers and logic and their perfect symmetry and how it all orders reality.

I’m not a linguist but I’m fascinated with how language operates, sequencing together seemingly random letters to create symbols we call “words,” then piecing them together to communicate the most amazing concepts that can change the destiny of nations or touch the deepest parts of our souls.

I’m not a neurobiologist but I love learning about the brain and how it operates, while also trying to figure out the difference between Brain and Mind.

I’m not a psychologist but I have studied most of the famous ones and am not unfamiliar with their beliefs and practices.

I’m neither an economist nor an anthropologist nor a sociologist, although I can probably speak at least somewhat intelligently for a few minutes on the disciplines of each.

I’m not a computer engineer or programmer but I get what code is and how computers function and what they do.

I guess I’d qualify as having some recognized expertise in education theory and practice, leadership theory and practice, history, political science, philosophy and theology.

I share this long-winded disclaimer because I think at least some variation of it can encompass all of us.

So, while we may not feel we are adept at understanding this or that because it appears daunting, I suspect we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We ought to pay attention and ask questions, especially when it comes to really important stuff.

Like I did, as an undergraduate history major taking a course in Microbiology taught by a professor who we were told was the runner-up for the Nobel Prize in biology for his work in the study of virology (or viruses).

I can remember like it was yesterday when he drew a picture on the blackboard of a T4 Phage virus and explained its function. It blew my mind on so many levels. I learned that this insidious little thing was neither really dead nor alive but sort of lived in between. It is one of the most incredible things in biology. While the professor’s graphic was 2D in chalk in 1974, I’m including a link to a very brief contemporary YouTube animation and narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFXuxGuT7H8

It didn’t feel all that dissimilar to when I looked through a small telescope in our backyard and clearly saw the differentiated rings of Saturn, right in front of my eye, filling a good part of my field of view.

In each, I experienced a sense of wonder and it is that wonder, like so many other experiences that have grabbed ahold of me, that have placed in me a desire to know more.

So, with that little detour, what exactly has happened, via new technologies, that is transforming the discussion and threatening the edifice?

To be grossly simplistic, we’ve developed really big and powerful telescopes to look into the furthest reaches of our physical universe. We’ve developed incredibly gigantic machines to explore the nature of minute particles and forms of energy. And we’ve developed the most sophisticated microscopes and related equipment that have allowed us to dive into the most incredible and miniscule parts of organic (living) chemistry.

In other words, the tools we use in physics, chemistry and biology are developing in sophistication far more rapidly than ever before, allowing us windows into the physical world almost unimaginable not that long ago.

There has been this fundamental tenet in computer science, called Moore’s law (around since the 1960s) that computing power doubles and the price of such computing power is cut in half every 18 months or thereabouts. This is a phenomenal observation but easily recognized by the power of the computer in our hands (that we can talk through) compared with similar computing power relatively recently.

One of the direct results of this phenomenon is that new technologies, which are really just tools (such as hammers or stoves or automobiles), are radically changing the landscape of what we can discover in the various sciences. Features that have previously been unavailable to us are now cascading into our consciousness and bringing us to newer levels of understanding about what we really are and where we came from.

And this, like it or not, has created a newly-opened door through the wall.

Chance or Design? Where is the evidence leading us?

I promise I will get back to themes that really touch on specific aspects of Christianity, for those of you who glance at this current stuff and find it somewhat unappealing. For whatever reason, I feel called to write about these things because, unlike much current discourse, I find Christianity entirely rational and consistent with scientific explanations of natural phenomenon.

So we left off with this wall. A wall built up during what I’d call the second, or modern, epoch. This epoch pretty much coincided with an historical period that ran from the late 18^thcentury to the late 20^thcentury. (I’ll put a nice starting peg in the timeline at 1789, which was the beginning of the French Revolution and just two years after the adoption of the revolutionary U.S. Constitution. For a frame of reference, Adam Smith’s seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, acting as the philosophical foundation for economic capitalism, coincided exactly with our own Declaration of Independencein 1776. This was also the exact time when the Industrial Revolution began and the beginning of some remarkable breakthroughs in science. Heady times, indeed!)

But, beginning mid-20^thcentury and accelerating rapidly through the 1970s and 1980s, gathering more and more steam until it’s now on full tilt mode, was the launch of a new epoch, an epic that is quickly casting away all sorts of things we’d been relying upon for how we live our lives and for trying to make sense of the things that are important to us.

Now, to use the term postmodern to define this new era, in which we are currently residing, would be to court a term that has some very distinct meanings, not necessarily in the context I’m examining. One such interpretation is that it defines an era which abandons a thing like objective truth. It’s certainly an era when the trust in traditional institutions like governments, churches and even schools is diminishing. Just look at the polls and other studies.

I have certainly talked about the nature of truth and concepts of whether it is an objective or subjective (relative) thing. But that’s not the focus here.

Instead, I want to look at what very recent scientific developments have done to destabilize that wall.

We should dwell momentarily on such a statement.

The wall has been constructed largely by scientists (who translate their scientific beliefs into philosophical worldviews) and by the philosophers who align with them and large swaths of he  public who believe them. From their side of the wall, the objective is to influence vast numbers of people that the believers in Theism or Supernaturalism are misguided and should be sidelined or even destroyed. Of course, this is happening all around us and has been accelerating, especially in the universities and popular media.

But, this wall was not built just by scientists and associated philosophers who discarded God as a figment. It was also supported by many Christians who were reluctant to engage with science, holding to very rigid viewpoints such as young earth creationism (the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old). This latter approach only served to cement the opinions of many that such religious “fundamentalists” were irrational and that their “faith was blind.” Regardless, popular culture was making its decision that the fundamental issues were firmly settled.

But a funny thing happened on the way to ending the debate.

And, that thing was and is technology, the product of incredible investments of time and resources within the scientific community.

If the Industrial Revolution is the major economic element of the modern era, then the Technological (or Information) Revolution is the economic element of the post-modern era. I will refrain here from getting into the relationship between economic forces and their impact upon things like institutions and belief but there are some fascinating connections.

In our case, however, it is to the massive advances in technology employed by scientists in physics, chemistry and biology that are not only creating cracks in the edifice but also suggest the portent of some remarkable new understandings.

As the debate is now launching, new sophisticated technologies are allowing us to peer far more deeply into the complexities of the tiniest organisms as well as the furthest reaches of space, including the nature of matter, energy and time. And through these, a single radical new perspective is emerging. And, it’s emerging from science, not theology.

Simply put, maybe the theists had it right all along. We’ll see.

Now, for those of you who are committed believers in God, especially of a Judaic or Christian God, this may come across as largely irrelevant. You’ve managed to sustain your beliefs for all sorts of reasons (faith in the inerrancy of the Bible being a common one accepted by large groups of Christians). Others may come to faith through a rational examination of fundamental values and principles, such as C.S. Lewis did and as expressed beautifully in his great Mere Christianity. Still others had such influences as a conversion experience or the mentoring by parents, pastors and friends that led you to belief and help sustain those beliefs. It’s a long list.

But, relatively few people over the last two hundred years have come to belief in God because physics, chemistry and biology actually point to God. As I’ve been saying, it’s largely the opposite.

Enter technology and this unfolding Age of Information and let’s put on our seat belts.

As any of you who valiantly wade into my stuff will undoubtedly know, I’m pretty fascinated with the intersection of faith and science or, maybe put a little differently … culture that recognizes the supernatural and culture that doesn’t.

I think this goes a long way to helping bridge the gap between people of different beliefs and I’m a big fan of dialogue, especially when that dialogue challenges us to do two things: First, go more deeply into how and why we believe something and, second, to grow into better understandings of how and why others think differently.

Anyway, that’s me and I’m sort of going to continue with a thread from a recent series that I find helpful to explore as a believing Christian and, also, as a way of rationally communicating with others who hold alternative viewpoints.

Because, I think, some fascinating stuff is happening if we’re willing to pay a little attention. In fact, I believe it’s on a scale that can be called truly revolutionary in many respects. And, I don’t say that lightly.

I’ll begin with this very interesting phenomenon that is occurring right now in a place where science, philosophy and theology intersect. As I’m doing a great deal of reading, listening, and thinking about this, I can’t help but put on my cap as an historian to examine what’s really going on.

(Admittedly, I geek out when I see broad historical patterns emerge as if they are colorful waves on a 3D tapestry, linking complex features of the human condition and all that goes into that. And, we always need to contextualize our perceptions of things. The way we confront our circumstances and the realities of our existence are conditioned by all sorts of forces, many of which can be illuminated by a careful examination of various histories.)

This series will dive more deeply into the fundamental nature of our reality, specifically by further unpacking the notions of whether that reality is the product of chance or design. It is this quest that is producing some remarkable new findings.

I’m going to begin by painting with a really broad brushstroke here (almost to the point that it’s way over-simplified) and say that we can break history into three different historical epochs with implications for our topic. And those epochs are the pre-modern, modern and post-modern periods encompassing the last several thousand years. I’ll say again that this is way over-simplified, so please don’t quote me to any experts. 🙂

Anyway, I’ll suggest that the pre-modern epoch (at least in the west but I suppose it can be argued for the non-western world as well) could generally be characterized, for our purposes, by the dominant assumption that there was meaning and purpose to both the physical realms and our own individual realms as having come from a supernatural (outside of nature) entity. And, that such an entity was behind the creation of all things.

This dominant viewpoint in what we’ve come to call the West (which was founded upon Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian worldviews), began to give way to the reasoning of groups of scientists and philosophers principally in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, culminating in the 20^th century. In this time period (which we can begin referring to as the modern), we witnessed the flowering of systems such as industrialization, democracy, the rise of powerful nation-states and a shift to philosophical humanism that posits that mankind itself reigns supreme in all things and that we contain in ourselves the perfection of our condition. (If I haven’t yet been clear, this is a really big generalization but, while generalizations have trouble standing on their own without specificity, they can be useful for starting points.)

If one wants a picture of modernity, think of very organized systems such as assembly lines (including schools where students are placed in neat rows and columns in order to ingest the stuff whereby they will pop out the end fully formed). From such thinking came the great political and economic systems such as democratic-republics, capitalism and socialism, communism and fascism. The history of the 20^thcentury is not a particularly appealing one, taken from a number of vantage points.

In the realm of science, biologist CharlesDarwin’s fundamental theory claimed that the origin of life and the development of species came from random chance, accompanied by spontaneous variations or mutations whereby certain traits were naturally selected to dominate. His theory quickly took center stage and has remained there, fairly successfully fighting off all others for the past one and a half centuries.

In this view, life began by chance (maybe a lightning bolt hit a non-living chemical soup of sorts and out popped the first cell). After that, nature guided a non-externally-guided process and we are who we are because of it. So, a non-rational force (nature) guided (an accepted function of reasoning) process.

(This way of thinking tangentially led to a thing called Social Darwinism which was not at all unlike Nietzsche’s view of a super race and which led to the push for eugenics… which advocates for selective human breeding and even the killing off of undesirable humans who possess the weaker traits. What this really meant is that humans could jump right in and help accelerate the process in order to more quickly reach our evolutionary potential. Of course, Nazism, with its accordant philosophies, experiments and abhorrent practices, is also a byproduct of this overarching worldview.)

In physics, there was a strong belief that the universe was infinite and had been around forever. There was no beginning and certainly no pre-beginning. A prevailing view of most theoretical physicists through the mid 20^thcentury was that the universe was in a kind of steady state. (A theory that the great Albert Einstein even adopted but later admitted was a mistake). One way to characterize a tenet of this viewpoint is that time stretched out from and to eternity.

It is here that the wall between those who believed in God as the fundamental explanation for reality and those who believed in science as the fundamental explanation for reality was pretty rock solid. Quite high and thick.

The broad and very public scientific community that dominated the universities and science-oriented institutes and journals sent a clear message over the wall to the theists that the latter were adhering to what the scientists and associated philosophers described as god in the gaps.

This viewpoint held that, as science advanced, mysterious forces attributed to the powers of a supernatural being became consistently exposed as fully natural events now demonstrated through scientific experimentation and analysis. God, they explained, was like the tooth fairy, good for explaining something to an immature mind but, in the end, just wishful thinking or a kind of fairy tale. This following statement is characteristic.

“Because you are stuck in your archaic ways of thinking and don’t listen to science, you call something “supernatural” for stuff that can easily be explained by resorting to reason and science. You always fall back on the Bible (a grand mythology) for explanation when we’ve already figured stuff out. There is no creation moment or event. There is no overriding purpose other than that which is contained in the nature of particles and energy, as well as the forces which organize them (gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc..), chemistry and biology.”

And so, God began to rapidly fall out of favor. Churches closed all throughout Europe as millions abandoned what they were now convinced had no place in reality. God was dead or at least dying. Long live science and reason.

America is in that battle right now.

Here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of a small group of very popular scientists who inundate public media in the U.S.

“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

Or as the most famous popular astronomer of the past half century, Carl Sagan, forcefully said,

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying or reassuring.”

“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was or ever will be.”

However, the tectonic plates are beginning to shift again and it’s actually fascinating to observe!

Stay tuned.

Just before we left on our most recent trip back to the Colorado Rockies, one of my very best friends sent me a tantalizing text, raising the issue of doubt. While I won’t name him here, he is a wonderful and remarkable man, with whom I have grown quite close in the last dozen years or so. He is honest and disarming, refreshingly candid and transparent. He is not one to let a platitude go without a challenge, although he does so with a glint in his eye and a humble heart.

There may be this misconception out there that Christians don’t doubt. As in, they (or we), once the commitment has been made, stand rock solid in this thing called faith which, itself, puts to rest questions and doubts. Well, I have to say, anyone who tells you this is not being honest.

No, life as a committed Christian or Jesus-follower does not put to bed the full array of needling thoughts that serve to make us wonder what’s really going on. And, while some Christians might bob and weave with a shrug of the shoulders and exclaim, “well, I guess it’s just a mystery,” I don’t believe that’s a good answer in the long run.

I’ll be the first to admit that the whole thing is pretty bizarre. We’re asked to swallow hook, line and sinker, this story that there really is an all-powerful God who had this son (who is God himself) and the son was born as a human, later saying and doing all sorts of things that seemingly didn’t make sense and, to many, still don’t, including saying that all who followed him would have eternal life. Fundamentally, he called upon his followers to fully surrender their hearts and minds to him. Later, this God/man was tortured and killed as he purportedly took upon himself “the sins of all mankind.” The encore (which in fact was the main event when all was said and done) was that he was “resurrected,” which basically means he’s fully alive after being dead. Crazy, I know.

And, some think it’s not ok to have questions and feel doubts? Like surrendering our minds is as simple as flipping a switch?

Of course, the number one doubt held by Christians is that we have it wrong. It’s all a big mistake. We got sucked in by the myth. The whole thing just isn’t true. Interestingly, a very well-known pastor and widely popular author, just renounced his Christianity, basically admitting just that. He’d got it wrong. This kind of thing does happen from time to time.

If one subscribes to the theology of the 17^thcentury French mathematician, physicist and theologian, Blaise Pascal, he of the now famous Pascal’s Wager, then doubt is central and it’s a matter of covering one’s bases. Briefly it goes like this: If you’re on the fence about whether this whole Christian thing is real or not, you have a simple choice which, in fact, is a bet. If you choose to accept the Christian claims and you’re right, you get eternal life in a very good place. If you’re wrong, you’ve lost nothing. Since there was nothing to begin with, you haven’t lost anything. On the other hand, if you choose to deny the validity of the Christian story and you’re right, you’ve gained nothing because there was nothing there. On the other hand, if you’re wrong, you’ve lost everything. So, says Pascal, cover your doubts and bet accordingly.

While I don’t particularly like his simple formula, I do like how it exposes the nature of doubt.

As a rational person, I am used to examining probabilities. Having taken Criminal Law in law school, read my share of books and watched enough crime-based TV shows and movies, I know a thing or two about proof. In addition, my studies in philosophy and interest in basic mathematics have all helped frame my understanding of how we find some things reliable and others not. I’m a firm believer that, in this life, perfect proof is a nearly unattainable construct in anything other than pure mathematics. In other words, doubt of any degree is a reasonable response for we mortals.

If you put 100 Christians under intense examination after giving them truth-serum, they’d all admit that they have doubts about this or that element of their belief. Of course, this goes true for everyone other than the lunatic. In my book, the lunatic here is the fanatic whose extremism has pushed him or her over the edge. It is the height of arrogance and stupidity, of irrationality. Such people build immense fortresses which are probably far more about protecting fear and broken places than about seeking truth.

If there is a God (as I attest) and his character is perfect Love and perfect Truth (as I believe), then an open inquiry into his nature and the claims by all belief systems is ideal.

And, open inquiry accepts the fundamental nature of doubt.

When we examine our culture today, especially the political one, we are battered by the strident and unbending shouts of mobs, all massively magnified by social media echo-chambers that demand unwavering allegiance. Doubt is simply unacceptable. Which only leads in one direction … and that is fanaticism and, ultimately, violence. (The greatest abject lessons in this occurred in the inevitable breakdown of the French Revolution during a period called Thermidor, and in the post-revolutionary periods of Soviet Russia and Communist China.) Doubt is just not countenanced. Individuals are cast out and even killed for being honest. Truth has nothing to do with facts in such places.

So, what should we do with our doubts?

Well, for starters, we should shed guilt for having them.

Second, we should find people with whom we can share them, even confidentially, without being overly concerned with how they are received. If Truth and Love go hand in hand, then this is a good starting point!

In the midst of all of this, it’s good to rethink the basics. Why did we believe the thing in the first place and has anything changed? Have we listened to others and do they have ideas that make sense? And, upon what do these alternative ideas stand? What lies at their base?

Perhaps, most importantly, retain some semblance of humility in that we just can’t explain everything. No one has a monopoly on wisdom, despite how they present themselves.

To be blunt, it’s about probabilities. By accepting that perfect proof is a very difficult or impossible thing to catch, we can manage our doubts by looking at the evidence born of our knowledge and experience. We trust things for a reason. Doubts are rational processes, whether they arise from feelings or not.

For people who are skeptical (doubtful) about Christianity, I’ll offer two possible avenues.

The first is to avoid falling into the trap that says the Christian story just isn’t true. In this line of thinking, it’s plainly a myth and completely inconsistent with our modern (scientific) sensibilities. Clearly, if the Christian story can’t be conclusively proven beyond any doubt, then the opposite is also true. Neither can atheism or any other belief system. Christianity should be held to the same standard as any other. Because of this problem, many people throw up their hands and say, “I just don’t know so I’ll go on doing the best I can in this life and let the chips fall how they may.” More and more people in western countries adopt this strategy.

The second is to actually spend some time investigating the story. Dive into the debate. Give Christianity a chance. Avoid judging its merits solely on what one sees in the media, especially regarding spectacular failures by church leaders. Seek out resources that address the validity of the various aspects of the story. Ask, “why are there so many examples of very bright skeptics, atheists, scientists who, after examining the evidence, conclude that the story is actually true?”

For Christians, doubt can be substantially diminished through a combination of reason, coupled with hope and promise. Yes, doubt is a constant feature of our lives and we all have difficulty grasping God’s big plan when there is so much suffering and evil in this world. We can try to process theological explanations of why this is the case but sometimes that just doesn’t work or satisfy. It still doesn’t make sense. When this happens, I frequently rewind the tape to locate the things that do make sense, but would not if God did not exist and love me and everyone else. They wouldn’t make sense if there was no such thing as perfect justice.

As I’ve written before, it all comes down to the fundamental issue of whether we believe we are just particles in a completely material, random and meaningless universe or that there is a Designer … and if the latter is true, why is Jesus the most obvious pick from amongst all of the explanations?

Was the story made up? Was there really a Jesus? And, if there was, does his message and example really resonate? (After all, he said some very strange stuff.)

For me, I can’t find anything in the record of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection that doesn’t make sense given all of the evidence. And then there are my earth-shaking revelations along with daily experiences that leave no alternative.

Is doubt alive? Of course. Are the hope and promise alive? Absolutely. Is Jesus who he said he was? Bet on it.

I imagine we’re all aware of the image of the prizefighter sitting on his stool in the corner of the ring between rounds. I expect he’s at least a little bloodied, perhaps quite a lot. He’s attended to by people who are there to care for him but there are a whole lot of people on the immediate periphery who are there just for the show. And, maybe, there’s a broad TV audience of millions who are fascinating or are betting or who just like to be around when the carnage is laid bare.

So, with encouragement and the interventions that help him shake off the pain and physical limitations, he awaits the sound, knowing that he must try to stand again and greet what inevitably comes.

He awaits the simple sound of the bell and he arises to answer it.

All other noise fades into the background. All of his attention is focused on the thing that is right in front of him. This is a thing that will, inevitably, involve pain but just may involve triumph. If only he can persevere.

And so it goes.

We all know this drill. We’ve known it for as long as memory serves. I’ve known it in many forms. We seek rest and sleep at the end of the day, knowing full well that the morrow will bring many things, some of which may be kind and some of which may be a threat.

We stand up at the bell, with an innate sense that the next few moments may bring death or they may bring life. The next few moments may bring great joy or they may bring sorrow. Am I wrong?

Or, perhaps, we arise without a sense of either. We awaken to complacency which is another way of describing a kind of cocoon. We go about our business as if the business of life is the only thing we know. It’s just profit and loss. Nothing else.

Returning to the ring, what is victory and what is defeat? The prizefighter is not complacent or at least that’s not a good reason to enter the ring in the first place.

Rewind the tape and we see a whole lot of conditioning. A whole lot of hard preparation. We don’t get to adulthood without facing all sorts of challenges, the more fortunate perhaps skating to this level without great suffering or tragedy while others face it from Day 1. The prizefighter knows that victory comes at a cost. He recognizes that there is no gain without a whole lot of pain. He does not push back the pain but lives into it, recognizing that steel is forged from fire, not from softness and security. The warrior knows this, too, and we stand up in admiration and thanks when he walks by.

Of course, all of this is metaphor. We are, none of us reading this, in the ring or on the field of battle. But we answer the same bell.

To us, what is victory or defeat? What does the conditioning look like? The preparation of both body and spirit? Is the dreaded knockout blow the final moment, after which we cease to exist at all? Is all of our preparation and conditioning merely the attempt to get to some finish line that we call death and then there is a void that is actually worse than a void because a void can be the absence of something but we may not have even known the something in the first place. It was all a great deceit? Random particles and energy coalescing with no purpose that just happened to make a thing called Me?

The scientific materialists and atheists can’t help but ultimately reduce the goal of life to simple replication of DNA. If there is no purpose to creation, then any imagination that there is purpose to life is just that: imagination. Answering the bell is a function of birth, foraging for food and the means to sustain life, procreation and preparing to die. That’s the nature of the ring that is cordoned off from a non-existent audience. Sound bleak? Of course it is, despite all we do to dress it up with experience along the way.

Instead, when we raise our somewhat battered but still viable and hopeful eyes to the adversary across the ring, what is it that we see? To what do we aspire? For what do we endure the inevitable pain that comes only seconds after the bell?

Is it the hoped-for acclimation of hundreds or thousands or millions of fans who really don’t know us but see us as a symbol of something they long for? Is it money and fame and the material goods that we seek that will give us value and make it worth it?

Who or what is our adversary when you get right down to it? Isn’t it a desire not to be meaningless? Isn’t it that we will count as something? But, to whom or what do we go for that affirmation and how will that sustain us?

The enemy whispers that we are our own Lord and Savior. We are the ultimate conqueror. We deserve the acclimation and our moment in the bright spotlight of ardor, no matter how transitory, how fleeting. But, of course, the reality is that we will ultimately be beaten. Defeat always lurks around the corner. Death is inevitable.

But, let’s change the viewpoint. Let’s raise our beaten eyes or troubled hearts towards a bright light that is warm and beckoning. A presence so compelling that we must arise as if not of our own accord at the ringing of the bell. The acclaim of the fickle crowd disappears, to be replaced by the majestic voices of the heavenly host, each one of them focused intently on our own selves, as flawed as we are, recognizing that we are the reason for all of creation in the first place. The sound is that of Love, unbound, infinite, beyond human comprehension, resonating through every particle in existence.

And, so, we can slowly rise up on stiff and weakened limbs at the sound of the bell. But, without effort, our arms are raised high and extended, hands opened, faces devoid of pain but radiating light and tears of joy.

At the trumpet’s sound, we sing Glory Hallelujah! That is the sound of victory and we have arrived.

I expect that some of these essays can be tedious but I feel compelled to write them, even if they’re to an audience of one. 🙂

No two of us are wired exactly the same, although our wires are all made of basically the same stuff. The way I meet the world each day is not necessarily how many others meet the world, including some who are closest to me. Even when we share a common set of fundamental values, we can each organize them differently. I am fascinated by this for all sorts of reasons.

We can rightfully ask questions like, “What brings us joy? What saddens us? In what do we find the most fulfillment? What occupies our minds and attention when we are at rest? What does a life well-lived look like? Is there anything about me that I would change, if I could?”

These, and many more, are the conscious and subconscious considerations of how we can examine what it means to be alive here and now.

I spoke a couple of weeks ago on how much I enjoyed to read and, especially, to discover new authors who are exceptional in many ways.

Good writing is like looking at a beautiful piece of art or listening to an exquisite piece of music. To me, it’s a matter of absorption. One does not meet these things and allow them to remain on the surface. Instead, should we be so motivated, we can allow them to bore deeply inside of us, touching places that reliably help us to understand who we are.

An obvious touchstone for this kind of thing is to be found nearly everywhere in nature. From the unique and never-replicated symmetry of snowflakes and the miniscule perfections of budding flowers to majestic redwoods and mountains, vast landscapes and seascapes, and on and on … we can marvel and feel joy at being alive to witness such beauty.

I have written before about a thing called wonder. I think our first inclination on considering the nature of wonder is to categorize it as a thought, such as “I wonder what caused that?” Or, perhaps, something like “Wow, that is really beautiful!”

But, I think wonder might also be partially a feeling, a kind of gut-level apprehension of a thing. A sense, perhaps not completely intelligible, that the thing is of some ultimate significance. In other words, its meaning resonates more deeply than words will allow us to go.

Regardless, I am regularly amazed by wonder, both through thought and feeling. There are times when I’ve felt my heart seemingly overflow from the most wondrous things. And, there are times when my mind comes across ideas that seemingly open up whole new vistas of understanding.

Mind you, these are not regular occurrences! Perhaps, that’s one of the reasons I find them so notable when they arrive, nearly always unbidden.

(I read once, I think from C.S. Lewis, who said something to the effect that the longing for a thing can be more compelling than the thing itself. He was speaking, of course, about the ways that we try to fill places in our lives with things that are transitory, not permanent, and the nature of permanency can only be found in God.)

No, the stuff I’m talking about often arrives as a surprise. In writing this, I’m reminded of emerging from the Wawona Tunnel on California’s Highway 41, being stunned by the vista of Yosemite Valley laid out below. Even if the tunnel is familiar, it always comes as kind of a surprise. Which is only natural when we emerge from darkness into beauty. Or, when with friends, high up in the Colorado Rockies in the dead of winter, we come out of a rather steep climb on our snowshoes, through a forest and onto a mountaintop meadow at 10,000 feet, with virgin snow glistening in the sunlight, faced with the panorama of alpine peaks all around. Pure wonderment.

I’ve read some fiction recently that has cause me to weep. Not just tear-up but weep. OK, I have an emotional streak and am known to be passionate about some things. (I confess that I can cry at a Hallmark movie!) But, when the literature expresses a combination of deep meaning and beautifully-crafted language, I find myself in a place not that much unlike what I just described in Yosemite. But more so. The author’s voice being read is one that can neatly cut through the mundane and touch the sacred.

My response to certain books is not exclusive to fiction, of course. I have more than a few bookshelves full of books that have amazed me. As I recently wrote, another amazement is that I continue to find new sources of amazement!

I’m reading one such book right now. This one from an author who, before a week ago, did not exist as far as I was concerned. I have seen several of his lectures on YouTube that have completely captivated me. A small, prideful, part of me is a little jealous that my levels of wisdom are grossly underdeveloped compared to his! Fortunately, though, this tinge of pride is pretty well eclipsed by the joy of learning from him. The joy of this makes me smile and even laugh. New vistas of knowledge that bring wonder while also helping me to tap into deeper understandings of the way things are.

And this particular person, a world-renowned mathematician and scientist at Oxford University (who is also an extremely accomplished philosopher and commentator on the intersection of science and faith) is just one of three that have so struck me in the last week. Go figure!

I am grateful that God gave me both a mind and a heart. Knowledge is a wondrous thing of itself. Knowledge assists us in navigating the simplest things of life but also opens up doors to comprehend the most significant things. The pursuit of knowledge has always been one of the grandest expressions of humans throughout our history. We alone in the universe, so far as we know, are equipped with this ability. Of course, while other animals have their own and more limited scopes of knowledge, they do not possess the sense of it. They do not pursue it.

But, knowledge for knowledge sake is to me, a heartless pursuit because it circumvents the most important purpose for its existence.

At this, I’ll go briefly to the famous biblical account of the Garden and Adam and Eve. (I know that some confront this story literally as an historical thing,  while others take it as metaphor (which, interestingly is also a form of literal interpretation), and still others as mythology. Regardless, the story is a fascinating one and appropriate to our purposes here.)

Very briefly, what is described as the Garden of Eden, is the piece of God’s perfect creation wherein he put his first man and first woman. As the story unfolds, they walk with God in the Garden. They are surrounded by wonderment and unparalleled beauty. They see this and they are fulfilled, just as God intended. But, the voice of the anti-God, embodied in the serpent, whispers that this knowledge is not enough. The voice says that God has not given them the full knowledge that he possesses and that this is wrong, a thought that had not struck them previously. The serpent advised that God was basically hurting them through this limitation and all they had to do was to disobey the one commandment that God had issued. A very small one, they were told. Just eat from the fruit of the special tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Then they would know the mind of God. In essence, become God’s equal. The seduction worked and mankind was, thereafter separated from God.

I bring this up because it’s not knowledge, itself, which is the point or the objective. It’s knowledge that is in concert with God’s plan that should concern us. Just to know things is not necessarily good. Knowledge can just as easily be used for bad as for good. Zyklon B was a German pesticide which was then used to exterminate millions of Jews, who were, in the thinking at the time, merely pests themselves. The “knowledge” or belief in a truth called dialectic materialism served as the justification for killing many tens of millions in the communist Soviet and Chinese utopian experiments. The serpent is assuredly well-pleased.

On the other hand, we have the kinds of knowledge that celebrate what’s best about being human, including both our physical and spiritual flourishing. This kind of knowledge is often received with wonder. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we hear of the selfless act of strangers to risk all to help another. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we hear a community forgive the man who assassinated their children. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we see a broken life made whole or the battered body walking again, its owner with a broad smile on his or her face. The kind of knowledge like that in the Garden, when we are filled with wonder at the beauty of creation.

Yes, when I find a book that opens up doors to new possibilities, to deeper levels of understanding a thing I hold as important, it is like discovering a reflection of beauty. I find this in music and art … the objective of which is not to deconstruct but to construct. Not to lay waste to that which is good but to point to that which is good.

There’s this remarkable thing about little children. Their world is a place of wonderment. They are like magnets for acquiring new knowledge. They become fascinated as their minds grow at phenomenal rates. Their faces light up with joy to the surprises that seemingly unfold in rapid succession. They are trusting in their lack of worldly exposure. Yes, of course, they can be intensely selfish and driven to behaving poorly but they crave new knowledge and we adults rejoice when that is accomplished. We rejoice when we witness the wonder in their eyes. Is this a whisper of the Garden?

For, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4.

Knowledge and wonder. Hand in hand. For that, I am truly thankful.

If you’re still with me, we’re on the home stretch.

Jesus’ introduction to his most famous set of teachings is,

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In this elongated examination, we’ve been focusing on what “poor in spirit” means, especially in the context of which Jesus is speaking. It is not synonymous with “being poor” as many will think. And, while Jesus pays particular attention to poor people, he does so because his key message is about the fundamental brokenness of the human heart and so many who know the physical privations of life can find their hearts and spirits broken. But, as we’ve seen, he is speaking much more broadly.

Momentarily, we should at least ask what the first word, blessed, means. It’s probable that we have some intuitive sense of its meaning and that’s good but let’s make sure. Again, all we have to do is look it up. (We don’t have to open up some dense theological work to get the basics).

Blessed can mean “Holy. Consecrated. Endowed with divine favor.”

(I don’t remember off-hand but I think I may have written about the concept of Holy before. I’ll have to go back. If I haven’t, perhaps I’ll do so at some point.)

So, God looks with favor upon the poor in spirit from his vantage point of perfect holiness, which, in our context, basically means perfect love, truth and justice.

But then, lest we forget, there’s something that directly follows. There’s a logical consequence or result. There’s an “if/then” to what Jesus is intending for us to know.

And, it runs like this: Because I (God) look at you (us) with great favor, due to your humble and contrite spirit that is expressed lovingly towards me and many others, I give you the greatest gift of all, which is life in close relationship with me.

Yes. Life in close relationship with God has always been the point and this is the main reason Jesus showed up on the scene. It’s really because we’d lost all sense of what that truly looks like and, honestly, still do.

One source I checked says the Kingdom of God is mentioned 147 times in the New Testament and 56 times in the Gospel of Matthew alone. We might get the impression that this is important stuff.

One might also reasonably ask here if there’s a difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven.

It’s a very good question, actually, but can open up all sorts of distinctions and interpretations that will end up taking us pretty far afield. But, again to defer to Dallas Willard, the place we’re talking about actually fits with “kingdom” language. It’s where we live within “God’s reign and rule.”

This might disappoint a lot of folks who are enamored with a thing called democracy. After all, what modern western person can reliably stand up and contest a thing like democracy? From such a vantage point, things like kings, who we understand are vested with all power and authority, are anathema. Kings are viewed as tyrants and tyrants by definition oppose our freedom. So, is God a tyrant who opposes our freedom?

Well, yes and no. Let’s stay with this line of thinking.

If perfect democracy is akin to an equal distribution of power amongst all people, giving practical equality to everyone, then it’s actually a rather short hop to anarchy, which means that there are no rules. After all, both the theory and our human experience has always been that power abhors a vacuum. Utopian visionaries have regularly sought to create ideal places where human beings never pursue selfish ends but have always failed, for which there are some pretty sound reasons.

Let’s see if we can put it this way. Jesus presents us with an all-powerful, all-knowing, fully creative God who is also perfectly just and perfectly loving. So, does that mean he is a loving tyrant? One reason I don’t like the word tyrant when it comes to the Christian portrayal (or even the Old Testament portrayal which seems to include a lot more about wrath and the such), is this:

• His love for us is unconditional. In other words, his love for us has nothing to do with how we feel about him, including ignoring him and even doing really bad stuff. He loves us all without condition.
• If the Christian framework is to be believed, God, the father, sent God the Son (Jesus) to earth for a set of very specific reasons, among them to be both man and God at the same time, and to sacrificially “atone” for all of the sins of mankind, while also heralding the ultimate defeat of evil. (Theologically speaking, this was a big sacrifice and even bigger if one looks into what really happened on the cross, even far beyond the brutality of the scourging and crucifixion.)

Tyrants don’t do either of these things. Servant Kings do. Kings who are both lions and lambs.

So, to our question regarding the “If/Then” of the whole passage: Those who are poor in spirit shall belong in and to the Kingdom of Heaven, which is really just a way of describing this place where God rules.

And, the really revolutionary thing that Jesus kept telling anyone who’d listen was and is that “the Kingdom of God/Heaven is at hand.”

Which, when you get right down to it, means that it’s available here and now.

In actuality, Jesus said we can walk with God here on earth in this life and that doesn’t just mean following a bunch of institutionalized rules. It means we can participate with God as real partners  in his creative work. Does that sound tyrannical?

Yes, we are promised an eternal life, the where of which has filled countless volumes written by theologians and to which we won’t go now other than to say this:

A popular conception of heaven is that it’s an amazingly beautiful place where some or all people (depending upon your viewpoint) get to go to spend eternity. For Christians, presumably it’s where God “resides.” One of many problems with this supposition is that God is “there” and we are “here.” This is actually one reason that Jesus arrived on the scene and that is to show us who God really is and why he (to use that pronoun) is, in fact, fully present here and now. From this perspective, the “Heavens” have broken through to the earth and, therefore, the “Kingdom” (or place) of God is “at hand.” It isn’t just for some future point. Instead, it is perfectly present to us.

For us, this means that we can at least get a taste of what the purest form of heaven is like. All we have to do is open our eyes and our hearts, surrender to God’s authority, which is expressed lovingly, and we get to live in his “kingdom,” which is of the “heavens.” Make sense? 🙂

Now, to bring this whole thing to a close: To the degree that we possess a spirit as described thus far, especially through the grace of God, we are invited into close relationship with him and that’s a most wonderful thing.

And, that’s at the foundation of Jesus’ teaching and at the core of his introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.

Arrogance, unchecked pride, selfishness and a judgmental spirit (haughtiness?), are contrary to what God intends for us and seeks from us. No, instead, a servant’s heart, sacrificial love, and complete surrender to the God who loves us both unconditionally and for all of eternity, is the point of it all.

I, for one, need to try to remember this. Thanks for listening.

We’ll continue by asking what being “poor in spirit” has to do with loving God with everything we have. And, let’s remember that Jesus didn’t leave us wiggle room. He said everything by actually listing everything so as to leave no doubt.

So, in order to answer this, we actually have to go on an even deeper dive. Let’s take it slowly so as not to overload the circuits. A reminder of where we are:

Jesus is talking to what is probably a fairly good-sized group of people, including his loyal followers (disciples), on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee. He’s undoubtedly of a mind to give them a survey lecture on things he considers as fundamental to his life and ministry. After getting their attention, he starts off with a bang.

In order to understand this starting point to his most famous set of teachings, we’ve needed to consider (1) what he’s talking about, (2) the meaning behind the words, and (3) the context for why he chose this topic.

This brings us to his crystal-clear direction regarding the top priorities for our attention and behavior.

Now, the deeper dive is to try to understand why Jesus gave us those two commandments. There has to be a reason, even though on the surface, adhering to them seems practically impossible.

There has to be a purpose.

In fact, this goes to the heart of why God even wants us around in the first place. After all, being God (if you believe in him), he actually doesn’t need us! So, what gives?

Drumroll …

It’s because God created us to love. Because he created us for love. Because he is love.

Dallas Willard is one of my all-time favorite Christian thinkers and he defines love as “willing the good of another.”

Willing. As in making it happen.

(I could go off here on a related tangent about how God is love and what that has to do with the Christian God, conceived as three persons in one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But, I’ll spare everyone that detour!)

Let’s just stick with the “God is love and, so, created us in his image, which means to love,” among other things. (This can reasonably raise all sorts of other questions like “what is free will?” and “why is there evil in the world?” but we’re not going there today and we don’t need to. I have no intention, here, of examining all of the elements of the Christian faith. I’m just trying to address where this one phrase came from.)

Why does God want us to love him?

Because to the degree that we do, we will understand him and the nature of ultimate reality.

If we live within a deeply loving relationship with God, then we are immersed in the thing and that ripples out everywhere. I have written a lot about grace before, which I kind of casually claim is the most powerful force in the universe. Well, grace is one manifestation of love. You get the point.

We’ve all heard the story of Moses going up the mountain and bringing down God’s law, having spoken to God. The people wanted to know the rules for their new journey, having fled slavery in Egypt. They believed God had looked upon them with favor … they were somehow chosen and they looked to Moses as their leader and human deliverer. Moses ended up telling them the basic conditions for staying in favor with God. By living this way, they’d be focusing on the right stuff and staying away from the wrong stuff.

If sin can be defined (which I do) as that which separates us from God, this was a major source of prescriptions to avoid such an outcome.

And, the very first prescription was : “You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3

Now, what is God trying to tell us, whether through Moses or Jesus?

What is meant by loving God with all we have and by putting no other gods before God? Why is this Ground Rule #1?

It’s because we are always putting other gods before God and we are always focusing on things we consider more important than loving God. God, being God, knows this but he’s still holding firm. We’re heading down the wrong path when we choose to ignore or try to diminish the authority of his foundational commandments. On the contrary, to the extent we follow these primary commandments from both the Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures) and New Testament (Christian scriptures), we come close to God, which is really the point of the whole thing.

This can be better understood if we bring the word idol into our examination. The dictionary definition of idol is both “an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship”and “a person or thing that is greatly loved, admired or revered such as a movie idol.”

In fact, in our context, idols are those things we elevate in importance so much that, in actuality, we end up worshipping them (treating them with reverence and devotion). Actual idols can be things like money, fame, power, jobs, our children, certain possessions or pastimes. These are things that can, eventually, get control over us and skew us away from things that are more important for our well-being, especially when you toss God into the equation. I have been guilty of this and continue to be guilty of this. Creating idols is a full-time activity for nearly all human beings. (There is a big reason for this, by the way.)

An easy way to test ourselves here is to ask if we love thinking about something or doing something rather than giving ourselves fully to God. Show of hands?

This, then, is at the core of what it means to be “poor in spirit.” It is the understanding that God’s love is key and a model for how we should love. And, if a huge component of God’s love is grace (unmerited favor towards another), then we need to always be “other focused.”

I ended up the last post by implying that keeping the two main commandments is basically impossible. So, why did Jesus issue them? No matter how hard we try, we find out we can’t keep them.

This causes all sorts of problems. Here are three of them.

1. Some people who are Christians will keep trying and get very frustrated. This can turn them bitter and resentful, achieving the opposite result. They can believe they are failures.
2. Some people who are Christians will give lip service to the commandments and end up living their lives without them as a true guide.
3. Some people who are not Christians will point to these as idealistic and unrealistic demands which prove there either isn’t a God or, if there is, he’s not a good one.

A person who is truly “poor in spirit” and who also understands the nature of the first two commandments is the opposite of the narcissist, who screams, ME! ME! ME!

Instead, Jesus is calling for blessing on he or she who wakes up each day and inquires of God, “who can I love anew today? Can you please help me to consider my specific needs less and fill that gap by considering the needs of others? Please forgive my trespasses (wrongs against others) as you forgive mine and I know I’ve done a lot of trespassing. I realize I don’t deserve favor because I’ve forgotten you, not recognized you, and acted against what I know you tell me is best for me. God, I realize that you are the air I breathe but I don’t always act that way and I’m sorry. I realize I don’t pay enough attention to the suffering around me. Help me never to forget those in need and also please help me to bless them. Please help me to turn my attention away from things that matter little to you in the end and that actually keep me from focusing on you. To be honest, God, I am on my knees, humbled in the face of who you are and what you have done for me, for which I am eternally grateful. Amen.”

I’d say this is getting us closer to understanding Jesus’ opening statement. In fact, we still have to look at the second part of his sentence but we’re already part way there.