"H" is for Heat

Here's what I think, humbly.  Disclaimer: I am not a physicist nor a theologian.

Hot (adjective) and cold (adjective) are opposites. They describe relative amounts of heat energy.

Heat (noun) and cold (noun) aren't opposites.  Heat is a form of energy. Although we use it as a noun ("Come in from the cold"), cold isn't really a thing; it doesn't exist except as the absence of heat. You can generate heat, but you can't generate cold. You can build a heat ray, but you can't build a cold ray. Your freezer doesn't generate cold; its mechanism continually removes heat from its interior.

Light is electromagnetic radiation. Darkness isn't the opposite of light, it's the absence of it.  There are light rays.  There are not dark rays.  You can't turn on the dark with a switch.  Light dispels darkness; darkness cannot dispel light.

There is good and there is evil. God is good, therefore, whatever is good has its source in Him and is an imperfect reflection of His person and character.

Evil is the opposite of good, and evil is a thing, it has "substance," it can be palpable.  But God did not create evil. God created man in His image; that is, in a finite way, he imparted his attibutes to man. One of these attributes is moral agency. God made man a free moral agent. Man, in exercising his free moral agency, rebelled against God. Evil comes not from God but from man. All evil has its source in the corruption caused by man's rebellion. Evil is man falling short, sometimes tragically so, of the good created by God.

By my reckoning, if you are asking how a good God could allow evil, you're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is why God created man with free moral agency.

My Favorite Song of Advent

December 14, 2009

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,

Who orderest all things mightily;

To us the path of knowledge show,

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free

Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;

From depths of hell Thy people save,

And give them victory over the grave.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home;

Make safe the way that leads on high,

And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, great Lord of might,

Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height

In ancient times once gave the law

In cloud and majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Root of Jesse’s tree,

An ensign of Thy people be;

Before Thee rulers silent fall;

All peoples on Thy mercy call.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind

In one the hearts of all mankind;

Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,

And be Thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

Hymn 9 by Isaac Watts

Hymn 9 by Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?
And did my Sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

And bathed in its own blood,
While all exposed to wrath divine

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut his glories in,
When God, the mighty Maker, died
For man, the creature's sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face,
While his dear cross appears;
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne'er repay
The debt of love I owe;
Here, Lord, I give myself away;
'Tis all that I can do.

On God and Existence

June 11, 2009

I am a simple man.  I believe in a reality, an existence, that is too big for me to fully see with my finite vision, fully perceive with my finite senses, fully measure with the impressive but finite tools at my disposal, fully grasp with my finite intellect, or fully conceive with my finite imagination. Yet I have been ridiculed for my belief in God by equally finite people who are confident in their ability to know and state categorically that there is no infinite and no God, although it is impossible to do so. They are like a man cut out of a sheet of notebook paper who tells his fellow two-dimensional paper people that to talk of other non-scientifically proveable dimensions and of a three-dimensional world inhabited by large, multicolored, three-dimensional beings who wear shoes and play basketball and eat tacos is foolish and even dangerous, and that only the ignorant and superstitious do so.

To try to understand existence with no reference point outside of that which is observable is like trying to lift oneself off the ground by standing on a rope on the floor with both feet and then pulling up on the rope with both hands. As Francis Schaeffer wrote in The God Who is There, to try to derive meaning for man with only man as a starting point is like wandering along the wall of a round, featureless, pitch-black room without windows or doors. They confidently deny the existence of the infinite God without understanding the meaning of finitum non capax infinitum - the finite cannot contain the infinite.