I want to share with you some thoughts about my random Bible reading for today. I used to try to follow along with a Daily Bible or at least to go in chronological or some other order, but I have found that it works better for me right now to read bigger, "stand alone" sections every few days instead of reading smaller bits of a continuing story every single day. Don't worry; I do try to read a big enough chunk each time to get the full context. Actually, for things like the "Pauline Epistles" (especially, say, Galatians or Ephesians) I highly recommend reading entire books in single sittings to achieve greater understanding. Anyway, this morning I randomly opened up to Psalm 119, and, to be honest, I was not so thrilled about it. For one thing, I knew I needed to read the entire Psalm (which is long) to get the big picture. Also, the whole thing is about following God's law (which can be a major guilt trip if taken the wrong way). However, in reading it this time I was intrigued, encouraged, and challenged. Below are just some of the ideas and questions I gleaned from it. For those of you who have studied it too, I welcome your thoughts as well.
One of the first things that caught my mind was in verse 41: "May your unfailing love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise." Those of us who read this now through the lens of Christ might pass this over because we are so used to hearing about salvation and the fulfillment of God's promises. However, when David wrote this, Christ had not yet died, and I'm not sure what God had told David about the whole salvation thing. I'm very interested to know what David was talking about here (and in the numerous other places in the Psalm where he mentions salvation). The quick answer that comes to my brain is that David was referring to the promises God gave to Abraham and Moses, particularly the stuff in Deuteronomy about the blessings the Israelites would receive for following God's laws. I get the feeling from various accounts of David that he took this stuff very seriously. I just wonder what he actually knew about the salvation that would come through Christ's sacrifice. When we read Psalm 119, which type of "salvation" should we be thinking about? Like I said, we are accustomed to thinking of salvation through Christ, but is there some other level of salvation from God that David knew before Christ even came? (I certainly don't believe in salvation apart from Christ, but is Christ's salvation a part of some bigger, general kind of salvation?)
Another thought I had that partially answers this question is that there is benefit simply from following the laws themselves. In verse 45, David says, "I walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts." In general, we tend not to associate laws with a word like "freedom." Again, this makes sense in light of Christ sacrifice, but that hadn't happened yet. I propose that these laws (or "precepts" or whatever) are not so much devices to control us and to keep us from doing what we want (i.e. experiencing "freedom") but are statements about the way the world works. (C.S. Lewis talks about this in "Mere Christianity," which we are studying in our Sunday AM class, but this idea has been rolling around in my brain for a while now.) These moral, spiritual laws are, in my opinion, akin to laws of science like Gravity and Relativity. Verse 152 says, "Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever." As long as there is a physical world, things that go up will always come down again. In the same way, it is always a good idea to treat people with the love in which you would have them treat you, and there will never be a situation in which you should cheat on your spouse. What I wonder is, if gravity can be observed scientifically and even measured, can the same be done with spiritual laws? Well, I know that we can observe them, but it would be interesting to see if they can be tested and analyzed scientifically. Maybe it doesn't work that way; I don't know. I guess maybe that's what the Pharisees tried to do, breaking the laws down into formulas. Still, it would be encouraging to have everyone agree that, yes, this is how the world works and so we should live accordingly.
I say that, feeling frustrated that the world just doesn't "get it," even though God's laws really are as obvious as gravity. However, I myself don't follow these laws perfectly (far from it), even though I know how good and true they are. The third thing I noticed in this Psalm was David's cry for help from God so that he would be able to follow the laws. He uses phrases like "do not let me stray from your commands," "turn my heart toward your statutes," "let no sin rule over me," etc. Over and over again he asks God to come in and control him. On the surface, that looks even less like "freedom," but if you think about it in terms of freedom from sin, it makes a lot of sense. I have had numerous discussions with people about free will versus God's control over our lives (though I really don't wish to get into that here), and many people have brought up that God doesn't micro-manage our lives. However, I say that the absolute best thing for us would be to have God micro-manage our lives. We know from experience that, despite our best intentions, we simply can't follow God's laws perfectly on our own. What a relief it would be to have God swoop in and make us do everything we're supposed to do! (I understand that would affect the love element on our part, but I am talking about God controlling people who have already decided to love Him.) I love verse 109: "Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law." I know I live this way all the time, doing things that are stupid even though I haven't forgotten what I should be doing. What I really want is for my life to be in God's "hands." Thankfully, we do have salvation, and we live in a time when we do know about Christ. We don't have to be plagued by guilt all the time, so I can read this Psalm without breaking down in shame.
If anyone has any thoughts to add, especially if you have any more information about the context of this Psalm, please share.
-Becky
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
When We All Get to Heaven - Becky
NOTE before reading: This post is intended to spark discussion and thankful feelings towards God. If you think I am way off on any of this, I will say upfront that I don't pretend to have everything all figured out. Please feel free to leave any constructive comments that may lead me closer to the truth.
As I sat in chapel one evening during camp last week, I was struck with a thought. It suddenly occurred to me that those people—the people with whom I was singing praises and who I will miss terribly next year—would be the same people with whom I will be in Heaven for eternity. Up to this point, my experience with "camp people" has been that we see each other once a year (or twice if we manage to make it to a retreat), and only in the last few years have we been able to keep in touch through blogs and facebook. For the most part, "camp people" are the people you love dearly and intensely for that one special week of the year... and then you go back to regular life and all of your regular friends.* Fortunately, the Internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with these people, but there is still an element of separation going on because they are not physically there. Lately, I have been very sad about the fact that I will be separated even further from my camp friends (and other friends and family), but the thought I had that night during worship gave me a lot of comfort.
Think about it. If Heaven is even a little bit as I understand it, we will all be praising God together. But, we won't have bodies with faulty vocal cords to produce sour notes. We will have been purified and made "perfect," meaning that we won't have any physical hindrances to keep us from perfectly expressing God's glory. We can try as hard as we can now (on earth in our physical bodies) to give God the praise he deserves, but we fall short every time. After all, right now we can't even understand him fully. I believe that in Heaven, we will have not only the capacity to understand God in all his fullness but to reflect it back on him with 100% accuracy. (And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. —2 Corinthians 3:18.) I think that's pretty cool.
There's something else that's cool about the whole thing that, I admit, is speculation on my part. I have not studied this enough to be sure about the scriptures to back this up and their individual contexts. But, my general feeling is that since we won't, like I said, be contained any longer by physical bodies, there will be nothing to keep our souls from, well, "mingling" with each other. My personal guess is that, just like Eve was formed from a piece of Adam (specifically, his rib), men and women were formed from "pieces"** of God. I will even go as far as to say that I think that God (who is light, which is energy) himself is in us physically in the sense that he keeps all of our electrons spinning. In other words, God holds together Adam's atoms. (Okay, I'll go ahead and throw these out here: 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' —Acts 17:28; He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. —Colossians 1:17. I'm open to feedback on these verses.) If I am right, we and everything in creation*** are constructed of bits of God that long to re-join each other:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
Coming back to what this will mean for us in Heaven, I speculate that we will no longer be frustrated by the bounds of our physical bodies. More specifically, it won't matter that you live in Greenville, SC and your friend lives in Paducah, KY. It won't matter that, even if you manage to see your friend in person, the best you can do is to look them in the eye and to give them a hug (I'm trying to keep it clean here). When you're in Heaven, I theorize that you and your friend will actually be one. Actually, you and me and Moses and everyone who is there will all be one. (I do think that we will all retain our personalities—and they will all fit together perfectly to make sense somehow—but this part really is just a wild guess.)
The two commands Jesus (well, God) gave us that trump everything else are to love God and to love others.**** We try so hard to do these two things, but the truth is that, as long as we are hindered by the flesh, we cannot do them perfectly. Even when we aren't specifically thinking of doing these things to fulfill our Christian duty, we long to be fulfilled through interactions with people. Why else do we spend hours and hours on facebook? We all want the warm fuzzies. Unfortunately, our desires for intimacy often lead to going about trying to get it in the wrong ways. The good news is (if I am thinking correctly) that we will experience that intimacy in an infinite, perfect sort of way in Heaven. As I view the prospect of going physically far, far away from people I love very, very much, this kind of thought is what keeps me from breaking down. I have to let go of what is temporary and embrace what is eternal.
So, am I crazy? How would you say my points hold up as compared to the Bible (or, for fun, to, perhaps, C.S. Lewis, Rob Bell, or Francis Chan)?
In anticipation of what is to come, both soon and far away,
-Becky
*I admit that there are some "camp people" I have seen more often than that—and I do still love and think about my camp friends when they're not around—but that doesn't negate my point.
**However, since God is infinite, taking something "out" of him would not result in there being any less of him.
***No, I do not believe that rocks and trees and things are gods themselves. That is just stupid. I worship the Creator, not the creation. Rocks and trees exist in the physical world; therefore, they "have being" (physically) and require some form of energy to hold them together. However, simply existing does not require having consciousness or will or power.
****Yes, I know that there is a huge difference between "loving" God/people through selfless actions and "loving" God/people emotionally. My point is just that we are wired to be made complete in God and other people.
As I sat in chapel one evening during camp last week, I was struck with a thought. It suddenly occurred to me that those people—the people with whom I was singing praises and who I will miss terribly next year—would be the same people with whom I will be in Heaven for eternity. Up to this point, my experience with "camp people" has been that we see each other once a year (or twice if we manage to make it to a retreat), and only in the last few years have we been able to keep in touch through blogs and facebook. For the most part, "camp people" are the people you love dearly and intensely for that one special week of the year... and then you go back to regular life and all of your regular friends.* Fortunately, the Internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with these people, but there is still an element of separation going on because they are not physically there. Lately, I have been very sad about the fact that I will be separated even further from my camp friends (and other friends and family), but the thought I had that night during worship gave me a lot of comfort.
Think about it. If Heaven is even a little bit as I understand it, we will all be praising God together. But, we won't have bodies with faulty vocal cords to produce sour notes. We will have been purified and made "perfect," meaning that we won't have any physical hindrances to keep us from perfectly expressing God's glory. We can try as hard as we can now (on earth in our physical bodies) to give God the praise he deserves, but we fall short every time. After all, right now we can't even understand him fully. I believe that in Heaven, we will have not only the capacity to understand God in all his fullness but to reflect it back on him with 100% accuracy. (And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. —2 Corinthians 3:18.) I think that's pretty cool.
There's something else that's cool about the whole thing that, I admit, is speculation on my part. I have not studied this enough to be sure about the scriptures to back this up and their individual contexts. But, my general feeling is that since we won't, like I said, be contained any longer by physical bodies, there will be nothing to keep our souls from, well, "mingling" with each other. My personal guess is that, just like Eve was formed from a piece of Adam (specifically, his rib), men and women were formed from "pieces"** of God. I will even go as far as to say that I think that God (who is light, which is energy) himself is in us physically in the sense that he keeps all of our electrons spinning. In other words, God holds together Adam's atoms. (Okay, I'll go ahead and throw these out here: 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' —Acts 17:28; He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. —Colossians 1:17. I'm open to feedback on these verses.) If I am right, we and everything in creation*** are constructed of bits of God that long to re-join each other:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
—Romans 8:18-23 (Again, let me know if I am wrongly using this passage.)
Coming back to what this will mean for us in Heaven, I speculate that we will no longer be frustrated by the bounds of our physical bodies. More specifically, it won't matter that you live in Greenville, SC and your friend lives in Paducah, KY. It won't matter that, even if you manage to see your friend in person, the best you can do is to look them in the eye and to give them a hug (I'm trying to keep it clean here). When you're in Heaven, I theorize that you and your friend will actually be one. Actually, you and me and Moses and everyone who is there will all be one. (I do think that we will all retain our personalities—and they will all fit together perfectly to make sense somehow—but this part really is just a wild guess.)
The two commands Jesus (well, God) gave us that trump everything else are to love God and to love others.**** We try so hard to do these two things, but the truth is that, as long as we are hindered by the flesh, we cannot do them perfectly. Even when we aren't specifically thinking of doing these things to fulfill our Christian duty, we long to be fulfilled through interactions with people. Why else do we spend hours and hours on facebook? We all want the warm fuzzies. Unfortunately, our desires for intimacy often lead to going about trying to get it in the wrong ways. The good news is (if I am thinking correctly) that we will experience that intimacy in an infinite, perfect sort of way in Heaven. As I view the prospect of going physically far, far away from people I love very, very much, this kind of thought is what keeps me from breaking down. I have to let go of what is temporary and embrace what is eternal.
So, am I crazy? How would you say my points hold up as compared to the Bible (or, for fun, to, perhaps, C.S. Lewis, Rob Bell, or Francis Chan)?
In anticipation of what is to come, both soon and far away,
-Becky
*I admit that there are some "camp people" I have seen more often than that—and I do still love and think about my camp friends when they're not around—but that doesn't negate my point.
**However, since God is infinite, taking something "out" of him would not result in there being any less of him.
***No, I do not believe that rocks and trees and things are gods themselves. That is just stupid. I worship the Creator, not the creation. Rocks and trees exist in the physical world; therefore, they "have being" (physically) and require some form of energy to hold them together. However, simply existing does not require having consciousness or will or power.
****Yes, I know that there is a huge difference between "loving" God/people through selfless actions and "loving" God/people emotionally. My point is just that we are wired to be made complete in God and other people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)